Star Wars/WMG

Wild Mass Guessing outside of All The Tropes
There is a huge amount of Wild Mass Guessing occurring in the Star Wars fandom, with entire websites and communities dedicated to it. Indeed, it seems to be the favorite hobby of the fandom. To list all of the WMG's proposed since A New Hope on this page would simply be impractical. The Star Wars Technical Commentaries is perhaps the best-known website that specializes in Star Wars Wild Mass Guessing, and best of all it's backed up by an actual astrophysicist who had worked closely with George Lucas during production of the prequels. The "vs." sub-fandom also engage in heavy analysis and discussion of Star Wars, such websites are Stardestroyer.net and the accompanying Turbolaser Commentaries, Spacebattles.com,
 * Another great Star Wars WMG site was Robert Brown's "B^2's Star Wars Site" (best known for its examination of the Millennium Falcon and Jedi practices) but unfortunately it was taken down just prior to the release of Episode II. Archives from the site do appear on the net from time to time, however.
 * Fortunately, that's why we have the Way Back Machine: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.synicon.com.au/sw/ Deck plans which contributed significantly to the site can also be found here: http://deckplans.00sf.com/

The one from Alkor (S.Nikiforova): Anakin did his job as the Chosen One right!
 * Let's suppose that Jedi are correct in that the Force has its own will. Also, as several characters noted, there are no separate "Dark Side" and "Light Side", there is only Force. Which, as observed, reflects the thoughts and will of sentients, or even all life. Yet there are Jedi and Dark Jedi Sith Lords with their "dark side! - light side!" tug-o-war. What do you think could be the will of Force in regard of those who try to push and pull it apart?
 * (not mentioned together with this view in-character, but supports it) Both traditions are demonstrably poisonous. Sith eagerly cause (directly or indirectly) death of other Force users, Jedi suffocate other traditions (leech away the best potential apprentices before they could choose for themselves), and enact unnatural selection against Force-sensitive bloodlines (by hindering the inductees' reproductive behaviour too much). Also, both give the Force bad rep: as far as others are concerned, Sith are maniacally cackling criminals, and Jedi are above-law Thought Police of corrupt Republic. Not that the Force is anthropomorphic enough to care, but remember how the feedback loop includes cries of "millions of voices" of non- Force users?.. Feedback loops make good nooses.
 * Summary: It's entirely feasible that value of both groups to the Force itself plummeted below zero long ago. Wonder how the Chosen One could improve this situation?


 * What are the main results of Anakin's life and blunders?
 * The Jedi were almost completely wiped out.
 * The Sith are dead.
 * Bonus! Sith tradition is exposed and discredited, but not lost completely. While the methods of Jedi tradition are mostly preserved, as a guidance it's also discredited, in that Luke after the whole "I am your father!" surprise has a good reason to never again trust the Jedi farther than he can throw 'em (without using Force), and instead heed his own good sense - and he is by far the most influential Force User at the moment - yes, a pilgrimage to some cave in the butt of Galaxy to talk with Yoda or another force-ghost is an option, but practically the young and hopeful next generation will see Luke as their hero - or winner and worthy heir of Vader (who was busy being tough on public, rather than a politician creep), depending on the attitude.
 * How is this not the perfect outcome, from the standpoint described above?

The Force is just a tool.
"A certain point of view"? Right. It can be used for good or for evil, sure, but that doesn't justify mystical claptrap about the "Dark Side" of the Force. A screwdriver can be used for good or for evil, but you don't hear carpenters giving their apprentices ominous warnings about The Dark Side Of The Screwdriver. (Though if they did, then there would probably be a lot more carpenters.) This view has been argued for by Luke Skywalker (in the Expanded Universe) and George Lucas himself.
 * Then again, screwdrivers don't give you Evil Yellow Eyes and slowly turn you psychotic.
 * So the Dark Side is a result of improper tool use amongst the Jedi?
 * This is implied in Zahn's Hand of Thrawn duology. A Jedi using excessive power drawn from the Force loses the ability to hear its guidance; that's why Yoda, a Jedi Master, could lift an X-Wing from a swamp but ended up tired from the effort. Too much power, too little guidance... Dark Side. The main point of this was a Fix Fic about why Expanded Universe writers had been way, way, way overdoing the Force compared to what was demonstrated in the movies.
 * Were you thinking of the "single-handedly reassemble the pulverized remains of Darth Vader's beachfront castle in five minutes flat with the power of the Force alone" incident, or the "throw seventeen full-sized Star Destroyers clean across the solar system" incident? Or the reborn Palpatine's penchant for ripping gigantic holes in hyperspace?
 * Likely more the Vader Castle incident (the Star Destroyers were, at least, a group effort). It could be noted that Hand of Thrawn suggests using Force too often for too many things isn't all that good, either.
 * The EU is currently struggling with this. After the Vong War, the Jedi collectively decided (based on what Jacen learned from Vergere, a long-time Vong slave, tellingly) that there is no light side or dark side. Jacen continues to hold to this view ; the rest of the Jedi are becoming increasingly uncomfortable.
 * Vergere stated, "There is no dark side to the Force, only in yourself."
 * Not sure if it's Word of God, Word of Dante, or just Word Of Plot Convenience, but apparently Vergere was wrong. The Potentium philosophy, which basically states that good or evil in the Force come from the user rather than the Force itself, has been confirmed by the Power of the Jedi Sourcebook (according to Wookieepedia, anyway) to be "corrupt" and "misguided".
 * Most likely, Word of a million authors intent on retconning anything the previous author had to say into oblivion.
 * Best explanation is that the Potentium theory is actually true, but holding the "light" and "dark" sides in perfect balance requires an insane amount of skill, a lifetime of discipline, and the kind of emotional mastery that is vanishingly rare even among Jedi. With so few able to master the discipline, and with such terrible consequences for those that fail to do so (there's no margin for error when you're walking on the edge of the precipice), it's hardly surprising that the Order has historically erred on the side of caution and declared it heretical. The last thing you want is overconfident young Jedi convincing themselves that they can toy with the fringes of the dark side with impunity. It's a bit like the "Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny" shtick - it's not literally true, but it serves to deter Jedi from getting anywhere near the dark side until they are wise enough to understand the nuances - whereupon most of them continue to steer clear of it.
 * In that case, it does dominate your destiny. You are spending so much time balancing upon a razor's edge trying not to fall that it can never leave your mind.
 * Ah. Yet another multi-levelled "certain point of view" statement.
 * On the other hand, the Knights of the Old Republic series appears to embrace this mode of thinking: you don't gain Dark Side points through using Dark Side powers, but in the way you interact with others.
 * In this tropers opinion this makes perfect sense. The Force doesn't make you inherently good or evil, there is no "Light" or "Dark". It's just that some people are corrupted by the thought of having so much power. It's not the power itself, it's the individual. Vader went mad not because of giving in to the "Dark Side" but because he couldn't stand the thought of losing the only woman he'd ever loved, while she was pregnant and but a few years after he learned his mother had been tortured and killed by Tusken Raiders. Plus the fact he spent his young years as the indentured servant of a greedy Jerkass can't have done much good for his mental health. If only there were psychiatrists in the Star Wars universe...
 * There are: Jedi aren't allowed to visit them. Make of that what you will.
 * The Jedi do at least have their own counseling services. Yoda advises Anakin to visit them in Revenge of the Sith. Being an idiot, he doesn't.
 * With that fact and combining some of the above: the Force requires a certain set of beliefs in order to use it. It's only as powerful as you believe it is so if your belief starts wavering, then the Force starts to fail. As a result, a dogmatic, inflexible system of beliefs is required in order for their to use the power. If you believe that beliefs are relative, then you have to give some credence to people who don't believe in the Force and thus you yourself start to lose that ironclad belief. Some point in the mists of time of the Star Wars universe, somebody created a set of beliefs about Dark and Light and rigidly defined them. That tradition was passed down. As to why using the Dark side makes you turn wrinkly with yellow eyes, consider this: in the real world, beliefs can have concrete effects. Placebo painkillers can act as real painkillers, voodoo zombies believe that they have risen from the dead because that's the cultural belief, and certain Australian aborigines practice a system of belief where pointing a special bone can kill someone - and people who believe that have been killed by a "pointing bone". Now imagine that you've been brought up to believe that doing certain things are part of the "Dark side" and that this Dark side corrupts, then if you starting doing those things, then your mind makes it real. This also explains why Jedi start training at an early age - kids don't know that you're not supposed to be able to lift up a starfighter just by believing you can. It also puts everyone in a really weird situation: in order to use the Force you need to essentially delude yourself into believing that something which isn't true is true and that that makes it true. (My head!)
 * I'm thinking the yellow eyes, the pallor, and the other nasty side effects of the DS are not so much the Dark side, but the fact that using the Force alters the caster's physiology. The Dark siders usually take on their apprentices in late adolescence or early adulthood, after they're full-grown. They also encourage getting insane amounts of power very quickly, leaving their bodies no time to adjust to the extra load. That, and all the anger, fear, and the dog-eat-dog nature of Sith adds constant stress, which also hurts them physically. Their power can sometimes compensate for it if they choose to. The Jedi are all about slow, incremental growth in power and ability, and they take their apprentices from the cradle. This allows their bodies to grow into their powers and adjust, the side effect there meaning they're pretty much hooked on it. (Which is why Kreia was able to smile, reverse the spell the council was casting on Exile, and kill the lot of them). While this explains some of the reasons why the Jedi recruit from the cradle, it makes it no less reprehensible.

There is no such thing as a Force ghost.
Yoda himself said it in Return Of The Jedi: "Soon will I rest... forever sleep." A "Force ghost" is simply the essence of the Jedi -- his knowledge, wisdom, personality, etc -- having been absorbed by the Force upon his death. This makes said knowledge available to a living Jedi who knew the deceased; the living Jedi's mind will "project" an image of the deceased, and the Force will create a likeness of that one for the Jedi to interact with. It's basically a Jedi talking to himself. Other Force users can also see and hear the same "Force ghost" through the Force, because the Jedi's mind makes it real.
 * Admittedly, this makes it a bit harder to explain Dark Side ghosts, which cannot be a projection of a Jedi (since these usually attack the Jedi), nor can they be inherent in the Force itself (since The Force Is Just A Tool). Note, however, that these only appear in the Expanded Universe; possibly, as creations of the Literary Agent.
 * It could that those perverted by the Dark Side are denied entry to the afterlife, or oblivion, and are "damned" to haunt the galaxy for eternity.
 * Actually, they go to hell: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hell
 * It's also possible that they're projections of the literal dark side of a Jedi's nature; the death wish, the self-destructive impulse, given form.
 * Alternatively, the "force ghosts" are the sentient Force using the dead person's memories to synthesize a personality and image that the living Jedi will be comfortable with. Luke preferred to see a happy (though inaccurate) version of his father at Episode 3 age, and Old Ben Kenobi and Yoda, while the Jedi themselves are Dead for Real. Thus a possible explanation for why "immortality via Jedi ghosting" isn't actually less ethical than "immortality through living forever."
 * So why do Ben's and Yoda's ghosts argue with each other?
 * They're representing the two conflicting desires in Luke: He wants to become stronger, but he's worried that he's not ready.
 * forever sleep. Well, no reason he can't dream. His force ghost is his dream, and you can manipulate your dreams, although not perfectly. Of course, if you are "strong with the force" you might be able to manipulate your dreams more than the average person.
 * "That is not dead which can eternal lie and with strange aeons even death may die" / "In his house in Dagobah, dead Yoda lies dreaming"
 * Damn, I really want to run a Call of Cthulhu/Star Wars crossover game now...
 * When Yoda said I will sleep forever, it means he's dead. The reason a Sith can never achieve it is explained in the ROTS novelization. It requires complete selflessness and detachment, and Sith can't do that, since they're power hungry greedy bastards.
 * Exar Kun seemed to be enjoying himself for quite a long damn time on Yavin IV, and he's hardly selfless.

Jedi and Sith obey the Inverse Ninja Law, but only the Sith know about it.
Think about it. Lots of Jedi. Two Sith. And Yoda still talks about balancing the equation. Also, the Episode III dieoff occurred en masse, while the badassery of Clone Wars was in small groups.
 * Again, balancing the Force does not equal balancing the number of Jedi and Sith. The Jedi thought the Sith lords were extinct the first time the Council mentioned the prophecy about balancing.
 * Not the point. Hundreds of Jedi considered two Sith to be a serious threat, instead of something you send a squadron of Jedi (maybe two to be safe) to attack and defeat.
 * Conservation of Ninjutsu appears to apply to everyone in the Star Wars universe. The first moon-sized Death Star was destroyed by a single man, and the second was taken down by two people who weren't even Force-sensitive.

Jedi and Sith are equally evil.
They both see non-Force-enabled beings as little more than pawns in their power struggle, and the allegedly "good" Jedi have no compunction against using their power to manipulate others into doing things they wouldn't otherwise do. The rest of the galaxy would do well to rise up and throw off the Jedi/Sith yoke. But surely the Sith are much worse than the Jedi, you say, having done things such as destroying an inhabited planet? Not so fast -- we don't see it on screen, since the victors write the historical documents, but let's not forget the Endor Holocaust (which, admittedly, didn't happen).
 * The Endor non-holocaust was not the work of Force-users, but of plain old Rebels in plain old spaceships. Even Luke was otherwise occupied at the time.
 * This possibly implies that Anakin was created by the Force to overthrow both Jedi and Sith and create a new breed of Force-users, led by his offspring. Luke takes on the "Jedi" moniker, but the order he creates bears little resemblance to the original.
 * This has been disputed by the Revenge of The Sith commentaries, which state that Anakin was indeed created to destroy the Sith; however, Lucas has been wrong before.
 * So, the creator of the series and scriptwriter responsible for the whole prophecy thing, can be wrong about its implications?
 * Yup.
 * In Knights of the Old Republic II, the Big Bad has this as a driving motivation. Indeed, it's practically the premise of the game itself; now that the Jedi are gone, many characters (admittedly including several evil and/or Sith-influenced ones) are talking about how they were pretentious and useless.
 * "Only the Sith deal in absolutes" is a nice clue here.
 * If I'm reading that right, and my grasp on grammar works, surely the phrase "Only the Sith deal in absolutes" is an absolute itself? Making Obi-Wan a dark sider? Or am I just being Captain Obvious here?
 * A lot of people have pointed out the ridiculousness of that comment (which this editor missed the first time). Of course, how ridiculous it actually is depends on how you define "deals in."
 * Given that the Obi-Wan character is a manipulative, lying bastard, I'm inclined to define it as absolutely as possible.
 * I see the statement as a sign of a bit of modesty among the Jedi. They know that no one is completely good or evil, just a mix of both.
 * The Jedi are hardly perfect but they do try to help people; they live a spartan existence, obey the Republic's laws, and make life better for everyone at the cost of their happiness; the Sith can be summed up as "obey us or/and we will kill you and make the survivors our slaves." Plus there is a time and a place for telling, and then was not the time.
 * Try this on: the Force is True Neutral or Chaotic Neutral. It only wants to live and perpetuate itself, acting as a kind of glue/source code for the GFFA. Nature is capable of great cruelty, and great mercy alike. Then, some mystics on Tython started to realize "Hey! We can pull strings on this web of life/alter the programming and do some amazing shit!" Unfortunately, because sentient beings are what they are, they start dissecting it, classifying it, dividing it into Ashala and Bogan, Light and Dark. Civil war breaks out, the Dark users on one end, the Light users on one end, and any moderates steamrolled mercilessly by both sides. Thing is, the Force does not like being mangled to fit ideology. Unlike your standard Nietzsche Wannabe, it really is Beyond Good and Evil. The more you swing things one direction, the weaker the Force gets. This is why the Jedi couldn't spot the damn Sith Lord right in front of their noses, and covers why they were laying so much on Anakin and the prophesy. Windu even admits in the second movie that the Jedi are growing weaker. Also, the further you stretch things in one direction, the nastier the backlash when the Force attempts to right itself (Order 66, Ruusan thought bomb). Now, stretch the Force too far in one direction, and it's weak. Create some echoes along the line of Malachor V or Katarr, and you wound it. Wound and weaken it enough, and you could theoretically kill it. Small wonder Kreia was such a Revan fangirl - Revan was acting on HER master plan all along! Plunging the galaxy into Darkness was a heck of a lot faster and more feasible than dragging it into light. Now add some echoes - Malachor, Telos, et. al. - give the other side no place to hide, convert who you can and kill those you can't (via guys like Atton). Kreia and Atton alike mentioned that Revan's real target were the Force users, and Mical had almost put the whole thing together when the misplaced Bene Gesserit pulled the whammy on him. Given this, the Force (and Malak) were saving their butts at the moment Revan was distracted by Bastila's team.
 * Jossed by GL, confirming that there is a light and dark side
 * Aaaah, what does he know?

The old Sith really did go extinct.
It's unlikely that the Sith survived a thousand years at number of only two. Darth Plagueis was probably a Jedi Knight or Master who became very disillusioned about both his Order and the Galactic Republic so he sought to create a new system of power. He based his own ideology on distorted Jedi legends and propaganda about the historical Sith. At some point, he left and began training a young Palpatine claiming to belong to the old Sith in order to give his own doctrine a sense of history. After all, Sith are supposed to be masters of deception.
 * Discussed heavily in a few bits of the expanded universe. Most notably Knights of the Old Republic 2 where Kreia explains that even pre-Rule of Two Sith are not true Sith, because the true Sith were a non-human species long extinct. "The Sith is a belief."

All Jedis are grey ones.
If someone wields a lightsaber to slice people in half, they are very well willing to kill if necessary. Also, they don't want to get attached to anyone because they know they are prone to corruption, or that those people could be sacrificed without guilt.

Vader and/or Palpatine "debunked" the Force after taking over.
So Han Solo doesn't (initially) believe in the Force and it's pretty clear that most people think it's just a bunch of rubbish, even though there were Jedi around only twenty years previously, and had existed for a span of many thousands of years. What happened is, after wiping out the Jedi, Palpatine wanted to further discredit them in case they missed any, or new force users were born at a later time. So he and Vader went on TV, or whatever mass media they have, and used their Force powers to "disprove" the Jedi's force powers. Basically it went like:

"Palpatine: The Jedi are believed to have had special powers derived from The Force. Vader: Why, didn't they Emperor Palpatine? Palpatine: No, Vader. You see it's just a bunch of simple tricks and nonsense. Watch me do the same thing, even though I have no Force powers. (levitates table) Vader: Gee whiz, Emperor Palpatine, there is no Force! Those Jedi sure pulled the Tauntan wool over our eyes! Palpatine: They sure did Vader. So remember, boys and girls, if you see anyone doing these tricks, make sure to report them to the local stormtrooper regiment. Vader: I will! And I also won't forget to buy Palpatine's Own Lemonade! It's good to drink!"

And everyone believed them because 1) they were using the Force to trick most of the population into believing them and 2) pretty much everyone at the time was actually supportive of Palpatine because he ended the Clone War and brought about peace. Kind of like how people in Soviet Russia were completely enamoured with Stalin when he was alive because he saved them from Hitler and all the papers were only filled with good things about him.
 * Possible debunked powers include the 'Force Lightning' which is just Palpatine having a modified taser up his sleeve, 'Levitation' with some well-placed wires, and 'Prophecies' will have to come true sooner or later if they're vague enough.
 * Taser's are generally not high enough to kill, and they are seen emenating from the hands. The levitations are with the force (since wires can't lift senate platforms or rip heavy machinery and hurl them at unpredictable angles.)
 * Yes, but anyone who claimed to have seen a Jedi rip heavy machinery would have been assumed to have been exxagerating. There would always be a few people who believedin the Force, but as for the general populace, yeah, this could have been so.
 * I think the point was that Palpatine was using the Force while at the same time claiming that he wasn't, and that it was all just a trick.
 * If Vader was involved in the debunking, then why does he, in Episode IV, keep on talking about the Force as a mighty power, and get extremely angry when people don't believe in it?

The Jedi were founded as a cult that was created to prevent Force Users from running the galaxy.
Any 'official' explanations of the Jedi's origins is a lie. Force Users have been around forever, but the Jedi were not, and Force Users always seem to play a huge role in galactic affairs. Before the Jedi, the galaxy was divided into countless little empires, ruled by individuals or groups with Force abilities who were basically proto-sith. Things were constantly chaotic because these guys were fighting each other all the time, so someone came up with an idea to get rid of them. They began kidnapping children with Force potential and brainwashing them into assassins who would never seek to rule themselves. This was extremely successful and the end result was the Jedi and the Republic, with a new history of the Jedi being made up to look good. This explains why the Jedi have a bunch of rules and restrictions that run contrary to a persons nature as well as why they are determined to hunt down all Sith everywhere-its left over from the original cult.
 * Thing is, the Jedi weren't always the way they were depicted in the prequels. Prior to Exar Kun? They took their apprentices in adolescence/young adulthood, they weren't very centralized, and marriage/family was permitted, so long as it was understood that the Jedi business came first. No one blinked twice at the Sunrider family, for example. And even though Jolee screwed up, his problem was that the trained Nayama against orders, not that he married her or that she was too old. Exar Kun's little rampage must have scared the shit out of them, to the point of becoming reactionary and clueless. That's when they started with the child recruitment, and the "no love, aside from love of the Order" crap. It reached the point of art form with the Covenant killing their own Padawans, the rest of the Council pulling a collective duck and cover when the Mandalorians were turning the Republic to slag, and reached its pinnacle with the hypocritical and dogmatic Atris.

The Sith are the Living Force's "balance" to a Jedi Order that's lost it's focus.
Think about it. Whenever the Jedi Order gets too big and influential, along come the Sith to give them a kicking and reset the order to it's "original focus" which is helping people on the person-to-person level. It happened in the Knights of the Old Republic era, it happened in the Republic era and it's happened in the Legacy era. Each time the Jedi were getting to complacent or arrogant and WHAM along comes a group that seduces the power mad and vulnerable, steels the will of those still loyal to the tenets of the Order that focus on the Living Force and gets rid of anyone who thinks that fighting is anything other then a last resort. Naturally someone (usually a Skywalker) comes along and gets rid of the Sith. Annakin is the "balance" because he's both the Skywalker who gets rid of the Jedi Order and the one who topples the Sith. After the wars/purges are over, you have a small cadre of Jedi who wander the cosmos helping people and thus protecting life/the Living Force.

Yoda was lying about the Dark Side not being stronger
It is. It's stronger, more diverse, and easier. The only drawback is that you go insane.
 * That's only partially true; It's more offensively powerful certainly, but any genius knows that offensive power alone is not the key. It also makes you a self destructive dumbass (Vader and Maul were defeated by Obi Wan because of this). Light side focuses on knowledge and defense and healing. It has longevity.
 * It is somehow true. Dark side allows to have much faster growth which ends quickly both to limitations of user and the lack of longevity. Light side have slower growth but the user lives long so at the end it reaches the same power.
 * Luke says in at least one book (The Courtship of Princess Leia) that the Dark Side IS stronger if all you desire is absolute power, but that it's seductive and tends to make you go insane.
 * Mind Rape, Back From the Dead, Cloning Gambit...Yes, the dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some would consider to be...unnatural. But it makes you go insane and Stupid Evil as you try to become strong enough in the dark side to use it.

The reason the force seems more powerful in the expanded universe
Is that during all the lightsaber fights we see on-screen the Jedi are deploying all their power in some sort of invisible forcepush field, created to slow the other fighter, and the other jedi/sith tries to use his own forcefield to cancel the other one out and overwhelm his opponent. It's why Palpatine was capable of killing three masters so quickly, his enormous power had lowered their speed. It's also the reason Palpatine suddenly gets so powerful after the wounding of Windu, it is not an act, but the force field is negated after Windu loses focus and Palpatine doesn't need his own strength to hold up a forcefield anymore. Why do they use these fields instead of projecting everything offensively you ask? More proof for this can be found during order 66, when weapons that blast apart a battle droid in one shot, only wound a jedi, and multiple shots are needed to take them down. This could hint that the force is indeed commonly used by Jedi as a forcefield, an ability later forgotten and replaced by sheer power.
 * In episode I, during the first battle between Qui-Qon and Darth Maul, Darth Maul tries to capture the queen alive, and thus cant risk damaging the ship near the battle. Qui-Qon doesn't know who their attacker is, and wants enough of him to remain to interrogate. It's also possible that Maul wanted Qui-Qon to be able to flee, so Amidala would reach Coruscant and get Palpatine elected.
 * The second battle in episode I, is fought in a power plant, bad idea to throw force around there.
 * In episode II the major lightsaber battle is near the end of the movie. None of the characters want to fling around too much energy out of fear of the cave collapsing
 * This being the same battle where Dooku rips chunks out of the ceiling to impress his old master?
 * Episode III contains the battle between Dooku and Anakin/Kenobi. None of them want to fling around force because of the fact they are about 10 cm of hull away from cold harsh space
 * in the battle between Kenobi and Grievous, Grievous doesn't have any force powers and Kenobi is afraid that if he gained too much of an advantage, the droids would shoot him. Notice how he doesn't use force push against his opponent either, while this opponent has no defense against them
 * The battle between Windu and Palpatine takes place in an area that couldn't exist on normal physics, clearly there is some sort of shielding or other technology holding the building up. Better to not blow it up, no?
 * The battle between Yoda and Palpatine involves a lot more force powers then any other battle in the SW movies, this is because they can actually use most of their powers. They are still a little careful because of the senate seats being held up by repulsor lifts, and if they damaged the power source of that, they could get buried under an avalanche.
 * For the last battle, lava, fragile structure and force powers do not mix.
 * In episode IV, the battle between Vader and Ben took place near the Falcon, which Ben tried to protect. Vader wanted to toy a little with his old master, so he didn't go all out on him.
 * In episode V, Vader didn't actually try to kill Luke and Luke was not fully trained, so he simply did not have the power for it. Now that I think about it, Vader probably didn't even use his forcefield, since Luke wouldn't be able to defeat him anyway.
 * Before Luke learns the forcefield style, Yoda dies. He then goes to face the emperor and Vader. Vader and Palpatine can't use their full power since they are on a suspended platform over a giant power core. Luke goes all-out, since he doesn't know the technique.
 * As the last living jedi, Luke teaches all he knows to his apprentices. All he knows does not include the forcefield technique/style, so all the Jedi in the post-ROTJ era go all-out in every situation, not minding their surroundings.
 * Accidentaly played with in some Star Wars games. In Knights of the Old Republic, many light-side abilities where various force shields and ability boosts and dark-side powers weakened enemies (ignoring such visual effects like "red lightning" for life drain and sparkling for some others). Basically the only abilities that would be noticed by bystarnders are force lightning and telekinetic powers, just like in the movies. Averted just slightly with with the Jedi Knight series, as (especially in JK 3) Kyle and Jaden posses some of these also, and the fields are actually visible, but that's a detial.
 * Oh, my, God, the Jedi have AT Fields. (Yeah, I know, everyone does, but still.)

The Jedi order requires being consistently and repeatedly destroyed to remain effective
In Knights of the Old Republic, the Order has become decadent, terrified of action and useless. By Knights of the Old Republic 2, the Jedi Order is all but wiped out. Canon says the Exile goes on to reboot the order and it becomes effective once again. This lasts until The Old Republic, where they grow complacent and get nearly wiped out again. Fast forward to the prequels, and guess what? They are decadent, terrified of action and useless. Again. Oh, what's this? Yep, they get wiped out, and are then rebooted again, this time by Luke Skywalker. This is what "Bring order to the force" quite literally means: Kill'Em All and start again from nothing.

The Dark and Light sides are tangible.
If there was a great mystical entity which all life is connected too,why would it be concerned with petty moral questions?The Light and Dark Sides are merely philosophies-the Potentium were kicked out because the Jedi Council found such an idea unsettling.Sith believe only through selfish action can the Force be properly used,while the Jedi believe that the Force is not a tool in itself and rather shows the importance of life.Both are too pious to admit there are sides to the Force

The Dark and Light sides of the Force exist because of the Jedi philosophy
My experience with the EU is fractional, but I did read several books a long time ago which took place during Obi-Wan's academy years. In them, the Jedi students who had trouble with their emotions were encouraged to 'let those feelings go into the Force'. The Force is a connected to all living things, yes? And if you have a whole bunch of Jedi pushing their anger, aggression, hate, frustration, etc, into such a network, it stands to reason that it's going to come out somewhere else, doesn't it? So the Jedi actually create the darkside by being unable to process their own darker emotions. Any sufficiently trained Force-sensitive who cannot or does not join in pushing aside those feelings becomes a lightning rod for everyone elses discarded negativity, hence why, in most cases of Sith versus Jedi, there are a small number of Sith and a large number of Jedi. Sith power hinges on having a big group of Jedi in order to create enough excess hate for them to tap into, and they're much stronger when only a limited number of individuals is doing this. But, being only human (so to speak), having all of that unpleasant emotion dumped repeatedly into them creates a complex and inescapable resentment towards its source - i.e., Jedi. So the Sith inevitably do themselves in by dramatically reducing the number of Jedi, at which point their power level drops, and the Jedi make a come back. Hence the endless cycle.

Prequel-era Jedi were actually allowed to marry and form families
However, this comes with a big caveat. Having a family means attachment which Jedi are not supposed to cultivate. They are supposed to see the needs of the many over the needs of the few and this requires a substantial amount of discipline and responsibility to accept, so the Order has Shoot Your Mate (or more likely, Abandon Your Mate)-style tests to prove a Jedi's willingness to accept their spouses and children are to come second to the greater whole. Those who succeed are allowed to stay, but those who fail are given a choice: leave your love, or leave the Order, because they can't afford to have someone bug out in the middle of an important mission that would determine the lives of millions/billions because someone tried to kidnap the Jedi's family to influence the process and it would be cruel to potentially put them in that situation. As for why they don't form relationships with other Jedi, such Jedi would be dealing with a combination of a lifetime of indoctrination and a view of the Order that would be like the Westermark Effect, meaning they would see other members as siblings.

As for why Anakin didn't try for this... Anakin was The Chosen One, a glory hound, and was impulsive, vain and undisciplined. He had a lot of pressure to fulfill the prophecy, liked the idea of being the Galaxy's number one hero, and would fail that "Jedi Marriage Test" on reputation alone. He couldn't fulfill all three, but wanted to, so he had to keep his relationship secret (which would get him expelled because he went and got married without the Order's approval), and this spiraled until Anakin had his Shoot Your Mate scenario play out (but was under actual field conditions), and we all saw how well that turned out.

This is to correlate the Jedi families mentioned in the Expanded Universe and Ki-Adi Mundi's own family. Those were either ex-Jedi or Jedi who passed the test, and Mundi himself got permission. Most Jedi didn't bother. Obi Wan didn't try for this test for Duchess Satine because at the time he knew he couldn't keep his feelings in check at the time and decided his ability to help the galaxy at large was more important to him than his own personal desires. As for why he didn't later, he didn't want to burden her with someone who couldn't be there for her all the time, and that would let her find one who could.


 * Ki-Adi Mundi was a special case. Being from an endangered species, it was of the utmost importance that he married and had a family. The Jedi made a special exception for him because of this, as long as he didn't let it control him. For the rest of the Jedi however, marriage had been banned since approximately 4000 BBY as a part of the reforms set in place to prevent another Sith Lord like Exar Kun to ever come from the Jedi Order again (said reforms also mandated the teaching of padawans from childhood, a practice that was nonexistent prior to Exar Kun's betrayal)

Midichlorians are poisonous to non-Jedis, Padme died because of them.
A high midichlorian count is a trait shared by a limited amount of individuals, it's essentially a mutation. However, since midichlorians are connected to an energy field called "The Force", they constantly emanate a high level of radiation. Because of their mutation Jedis themselves are immune to the radiation, but to a non-Jedi, a prolonged contact with midichlorians is poisonous. The risk of midichlorian poisoning is especially high if a non-Jedi regularly has intercourse with a Jedi; this is the real reason why Jedis aren't allowed to marry. Even worse is a situation where a Jedi impregnates a non-Jedi, as she is now carrying a midichlorian-heavy, radiation-emanating fetus inside her. This is sort of pregnancy is almost always lethal to the mother, and that's the reason Padme died. It was Luke and Leia who killed her. The medical robots didn't detect anything wrong with Padme, because the existence Midichlorian radiation was unknown to them, and hence they didn't have the technology to detect it. This also explains why Padme's dialogue in episodes II and III was so stilted and sounded unnatural: she was suffering from radiation poisoning, which affected her speech and other brain functions.
 * Even the Jedis themselves don't know about the midichlorian poisoning. A long time ago, when the Jedi order was young, Jedis were allowed to marry. However, they soon noticed that the spouses of Jedis would mysteriously die in alarming numbers. Back then Jedi were far less advanced technologically, and they didn't even know about the existence of midichlorians, so they thought these deaths were some kind of a curse. They deduced that The Force didn't want them to marry, and thus set a law banning all Jedis from marrying. After enough time passed, the original reason behind the ban was forgotten and it just became a part of Jedi tradition. This is why, when the midichlorians were discovered, no one thought of connecting them to the marriage ban. Since almost all Jedis followed the rule of not marrying, there weren't enough midichlorian poisonings for anyone to get interested in the phenomenon and discover its cause.
 * Then why is Han Solo still alive and quite well in his seventies?
 * This WMG is based on the movie canon. I don't know or care what happens in other SW material. But, if you want to speculate, it's perfectly possible Leia doesn't have the mutation, as she doesn't show any Force related powers in the movies. So Han might be safe after Episode VI.
 * Leia heard Luke's call for help in Episode V and was able to locate him very specifically. Also from ROTJ: "My family is strong in the force. My father has it. I have it....My sister has it...Yes, you Leia.......You have that power too". And: "If you will not turn to the dark side, then perhaps she will"(Vader to Luke goading him into a fight). Good try but canon definitely states Leia is strong in the Force.

The force is neutral; it's the Midichlorians that inspire the light and dark side.
A long time ago, there were no Midichlorians in the universe, and only more developed beings could access the force. However, a certain microbe mutated to learn how to use the force as a fuel source, and then used the force to spread across the galaxy, going wherever the force went. They discovered that the easiest ways to get a large amount of force power was to push their hosts to either side of the emotional spectrum, so one variety of Midichlorians developed to focus on feeding on the types of force powers associated with the dark side(lightning, for example), and in order to further this developed to instigate fear and rage to maximize their feeding.

The other side developed to the other side, allowing for lower amounts of force power but a far larger number of hosts in most cases. This type is a more benign type, but it still influences their hosts towards a path that leads to their reproduction.

The Dark Side parasite, however, makes the dark jedi use their large amounts of power, and then feeds off it, growing exponentially. This explains why dark jedi feel like they have more power; they DO, but soon after they gain that power their inner microbes feed off it so much that they might as well not have any more than anyone else.

Finally, any incorrect beliefs about Midichlorians being necessary for life to form are just a mind control self defense mechanism of the Midichlorians to prevent them from being wiped out.

Balancing the Force requires limiting the use of Force power.
Simple as that. The Force doesn't have a good and evil side. The Light and Dark Sides refer to how one uses the Force: the Light Side means conserving the use of the Force to a minimum, if at all, and the Dark Side means continously using massive amounts of Force Energy. This explains why the Jedi are emotionally detached, and the Sith are giant hams. Anakin came into being to eliminate overuse of the Force, and Palpy was the personification of this. Technically speaking, you could use the Dark Side for good and or the light side for bad, but you'd still have to be a passion-infused Large Ham for the former or a stoic for the latter.

The midichlorians don't really exist.
Lucas has said that only the events of the six movies are true Canon. And what actually happens in the movies? We see Qui-Gon telling a young Obi-Wan that the Force is controlled by midichlorians in their blood. We also, in IV, see Obi-Wan telling Luke that Vader killed Anakin. This was "true from a certain perspective", i.e., a blatant lie. In the same way, Qui-Gon was just pulling Obi-Wan's leg, or whatever.

The Skywalker bloodline is cursed.
A long time ago, one of the ancestors in the Skywalker family committed an extremely terrible atrocity (something like destroying an entire galaxy). As a result, the Force punish them by putting a curse that every single family member in the bloodline are destine to suffer horrible pain in their lives. Lets take a look at the examples: Shmi (enslaved at a young age, tortured to death by Tusken Raiders), The Lars (executed by stormtroopers under direct orders from Darth Vader), Anakin (two words: Darth Vader), Padmé (forced to watch everything that she has worked for her entire life crashing down around her until she was killed by her own husband), Luke and Mara (Darth Caedus, that is all), Han and Leia (one spent his entire childhood barely surviving, the other was forced to watch her home planet destroyed. Out of the three children that they has, two died). The amount of things that go wrong for this family is high that it is almost impossible for it to just be bad luck.
 * They're the main characters. If bad stuff didn't happen to them, the movies/books would be boring.
 * Owen Lars and Han Solo aren't really a part of the Skywalker bloodline, particularly if you count Han's suffering as a child before he knew any Skywalkers as his "punishment".

Anakin was not The Chosen One
Considering that the galaxy experiences Lumiya, Darth Krayt and others at a later date, Anakin was hardly the one destined to completely destroy the Sith. They just thought he was the one. "Yoda: A prophecy, that misread, could have been."


 * Word of God said he was. The main issue is not who the chosen one is, but what the prophecy really means.
 * The Chosen One was the one who would bring balance to the Force. While Luke played a huge part in it, ultimately it was Anakin who overthrew Palpatine, thereby restoring balance.
 * There's also the interpretation that both the Sith and the Jedi were doing it wrong, and Anakin's job was to wipe out the old guard on both sides so his son could start fresh. Luke's new Jedi Order does a lot of things differently from the old, such as allowing marriage.

Anakin Skywalker has a mild form of Asperger's Syndrome or some other type of high-functioning autism, possibly due to only having one set of human genes.
He has no idea how to convey emotions properly in a social setting and when he tries it comes out awkward. He's stone-faced and monotone except in times of extreme emotional stress and frustration. He's a wunderkind with technology but is emotionally still a teenager (or younger). He's loyal to those he feels are his friends and can react quite viciously to pervcieved betrayal. Hayden Christensen exhibits this the best, but it can also be applied to Jake Lloyd (acting about 6 when he's supposed to be 9) and the OT Vader (killing someone over a trivial failure seems mighty tantrum-y).
 * If he only had one set of human genes, he would've been a girl. The only sex chromosome he could have gotten from his mother is an X, which would make him X0, and female.

Luke was a baited trap that got lucky.
So in order to "hide" Luke, Obi-wan moved the infant boy to Darth Vader's home planet, to his known family members. He also kept his full name. (Compare this to Leia, whose name was changed and moved completely to a different planet.) Obi-wan was "keeping an eye on him"... and filling Luke's head with stories of how incredibly awesome his real father was. Then, when training with Yoda and about to leave, Yoda refuses to tell him that Vader is his father; something that would at the very least have been useful in his upcoming fight. Clearly he and Yoda were trying to get Luke captured, and maybe even turned. Why? Theory: Luke has a Force-ingrained "sleeper command" to kill anyone who threatens Leia, even if he's Dark Sided. This would result in a secret weapon for when Leia would eventually have to face Vader and son. But Vader never paid any attention to Tatooine, and Luke escaped in The Empire Strikes Back, things Obi-wan and Yoda just weren't expecting. Then Vader triggers it in Return of the Jedi, which allows Luke to use "righteous anger" to strike him; The Dark Side being confused over whether that counts or not.
 * Something like this was actually brought up in the book I, Jedi, where the fact that Yoda and Obi-Wan letting Luke keep his full name was noted as being somewhat odd.
 * This actually makes more sense with Yoda's death in RotJ; if he set off the trap, why continue to perpetuate whatever was keeping him alive? Once Luke was on the way, he stopped doing whatever he had been doing, and less then a year later he went from fairly mobile to dead.
 * This could also explain why Obi-wan lied to Luke about Yoda being his master (assuming the story about Yoda teaching Obi-wan as a child isn't true). The brief scene in Episode II with Yoda teaching a class of "Younglings" doing the hit-the-little-ball-with-your-lightsaber-while-blindfolded exercise may have been added to explain how Yoda could be said to have "trained Obi-wan" as well as Qui-Gon, since he trains all of the Younglings before they become Padawans.
 * This also explains why Obi-wan chose the start of Episode VI to tell Luke about his relation to Leia. He was deliberately placing it in Luke's mind so Vader could find it, become interested in her, and unwittingly trigger the kill command. Obi-wan wasn't the sort to volunteer information for no reason.
 * Alternatively, one could argue that putting Luke on the same spot that Anakin's mother died is the most absolute guarantee imaginable for Darth Vader never willingly going there.
 * In an EU novel taking place just after Episode III, Obi-Wan finds out that Vader is alive soon after arriving on Tatooine, and initially panics, thinking he had unwittingly placed Luke in a very dangerous situation. The Force Ghost of Qui-Gon then reassures him that the above is true, and Luke's therefore safe. Note also that in Episode IV, Vader "sends a detachment down to retrieve" the droids, rather than going himself.
 * Which is exactly why it doesn't work. Darth Vader may not be willing to return to Tatooine, but he has plenty of flunkies he can send instead. A simple name change worked for Leia - Vader met her the very start of Episode IV, and had no clue who she was until he read it in Luke's mind in Episode VI.
 * They didn't even change the name her mom gave her. Did Padme and Anakin never discuss baby names or something?
 * I suspected that after Episode 2 and Knights of the Old Republic proved just how low the Jedi are willing to sink to save their butts. C'mon, their recruitment method was to take a kid from infancy, cut them off from everything, and teach them to look down on the muggles as sheep to tend. they are also not above Mind Rape, and Jedi Truth is called that for a reason. They were shoving lightsabers into the hands of 10-13 year old children and sending them to lead brigades of 10-year-old Mando'a slaves. (Traviss has many faults, but I salute her for pointing out just how hypocritical and evil that setup is).
 * Excuse me? Who ordered the clones? Oh, right, Palpatine. Why did the Jedi accept and lead the troops? Oh, right, because Palpatine created the Seperatist faction as such a threat that an army was necessary, and the choice was either use the Jedi (aka, closest thing to an army Republic has) to lead these conveniently-here troops, or be crushed by superior numbers. The clones were only slaves because of Palpatine's machinations, and the Jedi only led them because Palpatine's Xanatos Gambit left them no other choice. The Jedi are just as much victims in the "slavery and child soldiers" issue as the Mandalorians- never forget that it is Palpatine that is the root of this evil. Blame the Jedi, and you're falling for propaganda Palpatine set up to discredit the Jedi.
 * Pardon me, but if the Republic's in danger, surely the good people of the Republic can get off their butts and defend their own society! Instead they violate the Rights of Sentience in their own bloody charter (the one prohibiting slavery), and look the other way while slaves and child conscripts do their fighting for them. Even if the Republic itself did not have a standing army, there were plenty of planetary and sector defense forces that could have been assembled into an army the same way state militias were compiled into armies as required in American history up to the Civil War. There's also the matter of a draft for citizens, which dates back to Babylon, and which most democracies have on the books today. They even could have gone the Elizabeth I route and recruited privateers like mad. "Here's a license to wreak merry mayhem on enemy ships. We take 20% of the haul." (Privateers seem to be the bulk of the Rebel's "Navy"). Considering the Rebels had a lot fewer troops and resources, but were able to hold their own against the Empire in a match-up that was a hell of a lot more lopsided than the Clone Wars ever got? I do not kriffing buy the "they had no other option" excuse.
 * So, we have two infants. They train 'em the "traditional" way, and it'll get the wrong kind of attention. So, they take a gamble. Set one up with an ally - change her name, put her on one of the Core Worlds, give her all the military, diplomatic, and political training, browbeat in the sense of duty...everything aside from the Force use. Now, take the other, give him NO training at all. Hide him right where you'd expect your foe to look (middle of nowhere, Anakin's home planet, and with Anakin's stepbrother!). Plant your spy (Obi-Wan) there, and just wait. Because of the Rule of Two, there are only two Sith to worry about at any given time. Sooner or later, (according to plan) Vader or Palaptine would make a move and grab the boy for an apprentice. This would cause the inevitable Duel to the Death that establishes Sith leadership, leaving ONE Badass level Sith and (maybe) a green apprentice that could be easily killed by two Jedi Masters. After pulling this stunt, they could successfully pull a But Thou Must! on Leia, who would no doubt take it and accept the orthodox Jedi principles out of duty.

There's only one rule to the Force: die in front of Luke.
Lore SjÃ¶berg explains it all.
 * Fair enough, but why? Does Luke hold the key to the afterlife? Is "walking the sky" the road to Heaven?
 * Oh my god. Souji Tendou is trying to become Luke Skywalker. IT ALL MAKES SENSE.
 * "Out of Luke-Death range" has to be the best line ever.

Anakin was a Grey Jedi.
Think about it. Yes, he certainly did alot of evil things, but it could have all been part of a Xanatos Gambit to accomplish good. He realized that he Republic was decaying, and would soon fall with or without the Emperor, so he helped to establish the Empire as a way of spurring the Rebellion into existance. The Rebels acted as his version of Hari Seldon's Foundation, since he knew that when the Empire fell and they set up shop, it would be a fresh Republic with far less corruption and mindless bureaucracy. This explains a few things. First off, the Empire never found Luke's obvious hiding spot, because Anakin made sure there was no investigation into his family, after he sense Luke there. Furthermore, it's also the reason why there was no clear command structure in the Empire beyond the two Sith. Anakin put it in place so the Empire fell apart when they died (which he was planning all along), but the Emperor rubber-stamped it, assuming there would always be two Sith.

Anakin fulfilled the prophecy, just as stated.
He brought balance to the force. It seems obvious to me, but I've met enough people who didn't see it that I felt it should be added. Essentially, look at the way things are before he comes along-the Jedi have been in power for thousands of years! The Force was leaning too far to the Light, unbalancing it- Anakin therefore brought down the Jedi, and brought about Sith rule for the next twenty or so years. (which doesn't quite strike me as balance, but....eh.)
 * Nope. The balance is even simpler than that - before the events of Episode III, there were thousands of Jedi, and only two Sith. Then Order 66 came about, the clones shot the Jedi to hell, leaving only two left alive. Two Sith. Two Jedi. Balance.
 * Jossed by both Lucas and the EU. Apparently, for the force to be in balance, the only force users "allowed" are Jedi... I don't get it either.
 * This is because the Light side of the force, practiced correctly, is about maintaining balance. Obi-Wan said as much in ANH; "So it controls your actions?"; "Partially, it also obeys your commands." But the Jedi were no longer using the Force correctly, due to being unchallenged by the Sith for so long. Thus, the Force was unbalanced.
 * So balance to the Force means balance between the number of Sith and the number of Jedi? Sounds a little far-fetched to me. Don't see how that deserves such an epic prophecy. Especially when it gets thrown out of balance again within three decades. Remember, at the end of Return of the Jedi (discounting the Expanded Universe, which has little to do with Lucas) the tally is Jedi: one, Sith: zero. Potential Jedi: one, potential Sith: zero.
 * This may or may not be canon, but it's possible the 'imbalance' in the Force is the Dark Side itself, not the relative proportions of Jedi and Sith. Ignoring the EU, Anakin/Vader did destroy all of the Sith.
 * "Ignoring the EU"? Hope you enjoy that bonfire over there...
 * If the Dark and Light Side are tangible entities instead of philosophies, destroying the Dark Side would cause an inbalance. Unless you go with the "dark vs light equals passionate overuse vs conservation of power" interpetation instead of the "dark vs light equals good vs evil" view.
 * He fullfilled it through The Power of Love. But then, he got unbalanced and destroying the only person that kept him balancing the Force. Then, Luke was born, and his mission is (slightly) more sucessful.

Balance to the force requires all Force users to be Gray Jedi
Or at least most. Jedi (such as Obi Wan and Luke Skywalker) have been seen to be incredibly powerful when they give into righteous fury and combine the Dark and Light sides, even for just a few moments (just ask Darth Maul). Thus to bring balance, the Jedi and Sith must learn to reconcile their emotions with their reasoning, and tap into the true essence of the Force. Where's Buddha when we need him?

Darth Vader isn't Anakin Skywalker
Anakin died on the table, and Palpatine had to scramble to find a new guy. Or...
 * Darth Vader is the clone of Anakin Skywalker.
 * And Vader has no idea. He thinks that he's the original.
 * I know this theory is Just for Fun, but I can't help but point out how the fact that Anakin IS Darth Vader was a major plot point in Return of the Jedi, so it not being true would cause either a major plot hole or a huge dose of Fridge Logic

Bringing balance to the Force means...
(Yes, another of these) ... killing Darth Sidious. The Force has a natural balance to it. Life creates the Force, makes it grow. However, Darth Plagueis came up with a kooky idea to try and reverse it, to create life from the Force and achieve immortality. Of course, he mentioned this to the wrong apprentice and before we know it, Darth Sidious is doing experiments in this vein.
 * Canon is remarkably unclear on whether Palpatine's deformities after the fight with Mace Windu were a result of his lightning burning him or if some kind of illusion being dispelled. This theory states it was a combination (suggested by one of the designers of the Star Wars RPG), Palpatine was using Plagueis's techniques to enhance his lifespan and make his face look normal, but the combined scarring from the lightning and dispelling force of it destroyed the "mask".
 * The disruption of the natural flow of the Force is an immense violation of balance. In order to put a stop to this, the Force created its own life, a living weapon designed to destroy Palpatine and die, thus returning that energy to the Force and restoring balance.
 * As Episode 3 shows, the proper path to immortality is to give yourself to the Force. By taking from the Force, you provoke immense wrath.
 * Thus, bringing balance to the Force has little to do with Jedi or Sith, hence why Sith pop up after the Battle of Endor and it's No Big D. Reducing the Jedi population to only about two was just a funny coincidence.
 * An alternate take on this same theory is that Palpatine is an Eldritch Abomination made of the pure manifestation of the Dark Side itself. His very existence is slowly killing the Force. And thus, killing him brings balance to the Force.
 * He comes back in Dark Empire, but anyone familiar with Palpatine's character from the films can tell that it's not the same guy. And it isn't, technically. When he died at Endor, his Eldritch Abomination-ness was destroyed, but he managed to split off a piece of his mind at death, and sent it to occupy a new body. However, he Came Back Wrong, losing most of his sanity in the process. So, killing the cloned Palpatine won't restore balance to the Force, since Anakin already did it with the original. Thus, we can acknowledge the Expanded Universe while still holding true to the Word of God.

No, bringing balance to the Force means...
the death of Anakin Skywalker. Anakin was the abomination, a living being created by Darth Plagueis using the Force itself, violating the laws of life and death themselves.

Luke and Leia are not related.
Though they had the same birth mother, Leia was indeed a clone. Yes, this WMG is brought to you by a fervent Luke/Leia shipper.

I always figured...
...that Leia was the older of the twins and actually had more latent power in the Force than Luke, but simply lacked the Jedi training to harness it. Jossed by Word of Lucas.
 * Well, Revenge of the Sith Jossed the part about Leia being older, but has Word Of Lucas said anything about who had more latent power anywhere?

Anakin, Luke, and Leia share "chosen one" duties.
The Republic was corrupt, large parts of the galaxy were a shithole, and the Jedi were too wrapped up in their own schemes to care, but if one were to try to change the Republic, the Jedi would intervene. Force says: time to blow stuff up. Anakin acts as a catalyst to the destruction of the Jedi and the transformation of the Republic into the Empire. Once Anakin becomes Vader, he is now the "establishment" and can no longer act as an agent of change, so the "chosen one" becomes his kids; this quite possibly happens when they are conceived, or perhaps born. Luke and Leia both bring down the Empire, Gotterdammerung is finished, and everyone can start to rebuild a better world. Vader killing Palpatine was simply the actions of an at-heart decent person seeing his son being tortured, not the eventual conclusion of the prophecy, since it was Luke that took the initiative to "reconvert" his father in the first place.

Darth Xanatos
Anakin fell to the Dark Side once, but after his Big No, he realized his mistake. He then spent the next 19 years playing along, pretending (very successfully) to be evil. As we saw, he mostly communicates with the Emperor by hologram, so it's not implausible that he would be required to wait that long. When he was finally alone with the Emperor (and Luke, who was distracting him) he finally implemented the final phase of his plan and killed Palpatine. He would have then rebuilt the Jedi order, but Palpatine's lightning fried his life support and he had to pass that role on to his son.
 * Ironically, there is a Dark Jedi named Xanatos in the EU.
 * He would doubtely re-create the Jedi Order. It's not like he really believed them either, more like he felt betrayed by everyone, and just wanted to find peace with his family at last. Jedi, Sith, who cares? All this struggle between two Force-using Orders destroyed his entire life. If Vader was to survive, he would likely left the Empire and the Rebels to fight themselves true, as he was never very good in politics.

Darth Vader is the main character of the entire Star Wars franchise.
Didn't George Lucas say that? He said that the force was balanced when Anakin killed Sideous.

The prophecy promising “Balance to the Force” was deliberately ambiguous.
As you know well, there is a widely spread fan theory that Anakin brought the Force into equilibrium by pushing the Rule of Two on the Jedi Order. This theory actually exists in-universe as the Sith interpretation of the prophecy and is the reason Darth Sidious was so confident in his plans for Anakin. It is possible that the seer who originally made the prophecy was himself a man of uncertain allegiance and decided to combine two predictions into one: first the downfall of the Jedis, reducing them to a master and his apprentice, and then the death of the last true Sith, removing sin out of the Force. Thus, he created one of those prophecy twists where both readings are true and required. Alternatively, this was meant to confuse the Siths with their own heretic use of the words.
 * Vader killed all the Jedi and all the Sith so that his son could create something better.

Darth Plagueis created the Skywalkers with the power to warp reality through the force, and to be fertile.

 * When Anakin was the only Skywalker, the entire Galaxy fell to Dark side when he did, His family has basically controled the galaxy since. His only set of children where twins (so as too establish two lines) most male Skywalkers since Anakin seems to cause women to become alergic to celebacy, when they're around, so as to encourage the spread of these genes throughout the galaxy faster. In short, Plagueis wanted the whole Galaxy to be filled with force sensitive Ubermenschs.

In The Prophecy (at least during the prequels), Anakin is the Big Bad.
Think about it: in the prequels, the sith are supposed to be extinct, and there are only ever two at one time. The Jedi are WINNING. balance would mean killing off all the Jedi except one or two! I hope nobody does... oh, too late. this prophecy sucks.
 * Jossed. The mere presence of the Sith is what's throwing things off balance.

Anakin is based on Jesus.
But not the traditional version of him, rather the severely flawed Jesus depicted in Jesus Christ Superstar. There are a number of parallels between Anakin and Obiwan's relationship, especially in Revenge of the Sith, and Jesus and Judas in Superstar. In fact, RotS has several plot points in common, such as the concern over what if the Jedi council found out about Anakin and Padme, compared with Judas worrying about the Romans finding out about Jesus and Mary Magdalene, Anakin turning to the dark side being set off by the Jedi council asking him to spy on Palpatine, compared with what Jesus found at the temple, and Obiwan being forced to betray Anakin, his best friend, with Judas' forced betrayal of Jesus.

Leia has Hyperthymesia.
How else would she be able to remember her mother at such a young age?

Balancing the force requires a balance between Emotion Versus Stoicism
Because think about it: what did the Dark and Light sides of the Force seem to embody the most? Not good and evil, but emotion and stoicism. A balance between the two would require either using neither, or using each in a balanced manner. This is why Anakin exists: the Force was irritated that its users were on two ends of the spectrum, so decided to balance this out by making the Sith more stable, the Jedi more passionate or just creating a new order with both. Anakin represents this: As a Jedi, he's Chatoic Neutral to balance the Old Jedi's Lawful Good tendencies. As a Sith, he's Lawful Evil to balance the Sith's Chaotic Evil nature.

Palpatine is Anakin Skywalker's father.
Palpatine couldn't have known the legend of Darth Plagueis unless he himself was the student who killed him, since it's not the sort of idea a Sith master would want to put in a student's head. If Plagueis was Palpatine's teacher, then Palpatine probably learned from him the secret of using the Force to create life. Given that almost the entire plot of the prequel trilogy is a Xanatos Gambit arranged by Palpatine to bring Anakin into the Jedi order, initiate a civil war, and use Anakin to destroy his rivals so he could become Emperor, it's highly probable that he used his power to impregnate Shmi Skywalker with a highly Force-sensitive child. It also complements the symmetry of Luke Skywalker's rise to power and struggle with temptation to that of his father.
 * Of course, this doesn't explain why Palpatine just left him out in the Galactic boonies for seven years. Possibly, this was to better fit the prophecy about "he who would bring balance to the Force".
 * The psychological issues that Palpatine used with such great success to manipulate Anakin's fall are at least partly rooted in Anakin's childhood as a powerless slave. It thus makes perfect sense for Palpatine to have created Anakin to be born into such a situation and left there to fester a bit.
 * There's also the fact that raising Anakin himself would make it much more difficult, if not impossible, for Palpatine to have the kid picked up as a Jedi recruit.
 * Depending on whether you believe that Palpatine is still trying to learn Plagueis's power, he may not have had the ability to create Anakin. It is known to us that Palpatine cannot be trusted, but maybe he's telling the truth this time. Most signs point to Palpatine being the apprentice who killed Darth Plagueis, and the way he spoke of the legend almost conveys a sense of regret; he killed his master too soon. If this theory is true, then in all likelihood, Plagueis created Anakin. If this is another one of Palpatine's mind games even extending to the audience, then it's just as plausible for either of them to have created Anakin.
 * Palpatine told Anakin that Plagueis alone had known the secret to immortality; however, this does not mean that Plagueis did not tell Palpatine the secret to creating life. It's still possible that Palpatine was the one who created Anakin by manipulating the midichlorians to impregnate Shmi. Additionally, it makes no sense for the midichlorian bacteria themselves to fertilise an egg; there must have been some sort of 'father', or Anakin would have ended up with only half a genome. Since Plagueis wasn't human (according to the EU at least), Palpatine seems like the most likely source for the genetic material of the father, as he was probably the only Force-sensitive human that Plagueis had easy access to... perhaps Plagueis took a sample of Palpatine's DNA without him knowing, and impregnated Shmi with it via midichlorians.
 * Anakin being an experimental creation explains why Palpatine would send Darth Maul to Tatooine - the queen and Jedi were already going where he wanted them to go, so the real reason to send an assassin must have been to prevent Anakin from falling into the Jedi's hands.
 * Wait, I thought we were agreed that he did want Anakin to fall into the Jedi's hands.
 * it's not the sort of idea a Sith master would want to put in a student's head. Except that's exactly what Palpatine did in that scene.
 * Recently this was shot down (Or confirmed, depending on view) by canon. It's been established that Plagueis created Anakin with the intent of replacing Palpatine as his apprentice. Palpatine, for some reason, didn't approve of this plan, and decided to hijack it.
 * ...and to later do his own version when convinced Vader to turn Luke.
 * Of course, Shmi could have just gotten drunk/raped and was too embarrassed to admit. Given, that she lives in the center of a mobster-infested Wretched Hive...
 * I always figured it to be another slave (and confessing or admitting she was knocked up by a fellow slave would have gotten him/them killed), or a human owner/friend of the owner had "master's privilege" to the slave quarter. When she stated her boy had no father, it meant he hadn't a father worth mentioning.
 * Not exactly Palpatine but I do believe that Anakin was the penultimate experiment in Midi-chlorian experiments by Plagieus. But he only came around because the Force let Plagieus develop him. He tried creating life again using the same exact process used to create Anakin and it never worked again.
 * It's hinted that the Force actively impregnated Shmi and she IS a Virgin Mary metaphor. Anakin is destined to die to restore balance to the force, his mother was a virgin, and the Force is basically God so Anakin is God's child.
 * The Vong situation reveals that the Force is unique to the galaxy in which the action of Star Wars takes place, whereas God is everywhere, period.
 * Considering that a major plot point is that the Vong used to be a part of the Force, back in their old Galaxy, and that one of them manage to re-connect to the Force through messing with himself and one of their oldest creations, it would seem the Force, at least, wasn't unique to the Star Wars Galaxy.

Yoda (and Yaddle) are not aliens, but extremely aged humans.
The homeworld and species of Yoda has been kept under lock and key throughout the franchise, despite the fact that information is available for nearly every other character from stars to minor background characters. One explanation is that Yoda is not an alien, but merely a human who practiced some Force technique to greatly prolong his lifespan. Of course, this obviously caused some side-effects and deformities along with the benefits. "Yoda: (to Luke) When nine hundred years old you reach, look this good you will not, hmm?"


 * In a foreign language dub, this is exactly what Yoda says: "You will look like this when you reach 900 years of age too!"
 * If you want to get into cross-universe speculation,
 * Which makes Yoda a Time Lord!
 * Well, Yoda does resemble William Hartnell (the First Doctor) at some points.
 * Yoda had a flirtation with the Dark Side of the Force way back in his backstory. Palpatine's got nothing on him when it comes to Dark Side induced deformities.
 * I always thought the secrecy surrounding Yoda was George paying homage to Tom Bombadil of Lord Of The Rings fame. The secrecy surrounding both of their origins is to try to replicate many similar characters in mythology.

Palpatine and Sidious actually were two different people.
The Real Senator/Chancellor Palpatine was a barely-competent and easily-manipulated patsy who stumbled into his position due to help from Sidious. Once that was done, Sidious and Tyrannus started the Clone Wars, playing both sides and wearing down the Jedi. Once the war was drawing to a close, Sidious had Grievous abduct and assassinate Palpatine. Palpatine's abduction makes absolutely no sense otherwise, since the CIS fleet stuck around Coruscant after they had him. Sidious then took his place on the observation deck of the Invisible Hand, using the Dark Side to disguise himself until the fight with Windu. He just kept the front name "Palpatine" after that. Sith don't care what name they use as long as it serves their purposes. ...And Palpatine came out on top. Sidious thought that Palpatine was just a puppet until it was too late, just as planned. In fact, Palpatine, Sidious, and Syfo-Dyas were three different people. Guess what happened with the guy everyone forgot about because they thought he was dead?
 * Alternatively, Palpatine's "abduction" was a Xanatos Gambit arranged to allow Anakin to kill Count Dooku, simultaneously making him a hero of the Republic and getting him an in on the Jedi Council, and clearing the way for him to become Palpatine's new apprentice.
 * The duel on the observation deck could have gone either way; that was the point. If Dooku kills the Jedi, Sidious wins. If Dooku dies, then Sidious recruits the winner to become his new apprentice.
 * If you accept the word of the movie novelization, this is canon.
 * Novelizations are canon unless they contradict the movies themselves, and in this case they didn't.
 * Better yet, the Palpatine of Eps I and II was a clone. It was established in the EU graphic novel Dark Empire that Palpy kept a bunch of clone bodies ready for transfer when his old one got all melty and worn out. So he grows a special clone that he manipulates to the top of the Republic, but who is also ignorant of his true identity. At the opportune time, he kidnaps the clone and pulls the old Mind-Body Switcheroo when nobody's looking (the old body gets dumped out the airlock). His old apprentice gets eliminated, and he recruits a new one who was none the wiser! He probably had tons of clones over the years, but the most recent one was the most successful. After all, in Dark Empire he says, "I exist primarily as energy, formlessness, and power."
 * Jossed by Leland Chee. Palpatine never migrated to clone bodies until after RotJ.
 * ...of course, wether you go with this depends on your opinion of his opinion as Keeper of Continuity; after all, there's nothing the films or published materials that directly contradicts this theory.
 * Chee is the one who manages it, so yeah. I trust him
 * Then Palpatine sliced off Sidious' arms and grafted them onto himself, for the lightning (and win).
 * Syfo-Dyas was only mostly dead. Nor was he left-handed.
 * If you go by the novelization, Syfo-Dyas was an actual Jedi Master who had somehow stumbled upon Sidious' and Tyrannus' plot to form a Separatist Confederacy almost immediately after the events of Episode I. He then attempted to commission a clone army so that when the Confederacy arose, the Republic would be ready to fight it. If I remember correctly, he did not have any knowledge of Sith involvement in the Separatist movement, but nonetheless the Sith caught onto him. They killed him before he could detail his plans to the Jedi Council but decided to let the clone army develop unhindered, as without it, the Confederacy could have steamrolled over the Republic (which apparently had no standing self-defense force) with little to no opposition. Which would not have served the Sith's designs. Thus, when Episode II rolled around, the Jedi had a fully-grown clone army dropped in their laps, but since they had a full-scale war on their hands, there was little time or resources to devote to investigating the activities of a Jedi Master dead for nearly a decade.
 * Dyas predicted the violence so he commissioned the army. Sideous realized the army could serve their plans, so he ordered Tyranus to murder Dyas. This allowed Dooku to fully join while furthering the plot.

Palpatine suffered from a form of Multiple Personality Disorder.
Palpatine was Force-sensitive but somehow missed by the Jedi Order and discovered his abilities by accident one day; if we assume the theory that Force-sensitivity contributes to mental unbalance (see below), we can easily believe his mind bifurcated into at least two distinct personalities: Palpatine (the well-meaning, amiable man of the people, with all of Palpatine's good qualities) and Sidious (the "Hyde" to Palpatine's "Jekyll," manifesting all of the impulses Palpatine worked to suppress in his life and career). "Darth Plagueis" was another personality that arose as he aged; Palpatine discovered the secret to "eternal life" (or at least some way of extending his lifespan; his mind may have exaggerated its ability in his instability) in an effort to keep himself from dying. Ultimately, as in the Jekyll and Hyde story, the evil personality overcame the other one(s) and destroyed it / them.
 * Alternatively, Sidious created another personality, so the Jedi couldn't detect him.

Palpatine is not the Emperor
It's Mace Windu. He didn't die like some punk. He won, and decided that being a Jedi was for 'suckas'.
 * And eventually quit. He knows when your Dragon meets his long lost son, yous should leave before you die. Palpatine was left around to take the fall when Mace grew tired of running a galactic empire.
 * If we take in consideration "Lando Calrissian is Mace Windu's long-lost son", it takes the theory to a whole new light.

The Jedi Exile is an alien.
In the Knights of the Old Republic games, all humans speak Basic and many aliens speak their own languages, subtitled. The Jedi Exile certainly looks human, but she never speaks and we have to rely on subtitles to understand her, just like the aliens. She's also never referred to by name despite being an important historical figure, and we have no information on her family or early life. She also has the ability to cut herself off from the Force and mooch off of other people's Force connections for cool powers. This ability baffles several Jedi Masters and a professional Jedi historian turned Sith Lord. It's obviously the racial power of whatever race she belongs to, and she's called the Jedi Exile because no human can pronounce her name.
 * My Jedi Exile was a 'he' so your point is invalid
 * Canonically, the Exile is a 'she'. Of course, this adds new levels of tolerance to her makeup, because that meant putting up with the Disciple. (This troper tends to go with 'he', if for no other reasons than a) avoiding the Disciple and b) Handmaiden is a very, very sexy Lady of War).
 * I'm of the Male Exile/Female Revan school. Mical is cut a lousy deal in-game. He's a last-minute addition, and it shows. (He's cut a much better deal in fanfic, but I digress). Furthermore, all of Obsidian's concept art and trailer refer to Exile as "he." Top it off with Brianna (Handmaiden) getting cut a very nice storyarc with a side order of Fan Service. Conversely, a female Revan gets an additional romance choice, a third ending, and access to 2/3 of the largest dialogue tree in the game. Only one Bastila conversation is locked off. And the final in-game reason? Saul Karath and the Leviathan. You know he's not going to permanently damage Bastila. Malak would give him a lightsaber enema. However, the non-Jedi Republic soldier is worth nothing to Malak, is Karath's former lieutenant, and has made no secret about wanting to use Saul for target practice. Let Malak deal with the Jedi - torturing Carth makes more sense! From what I understand, Bioware was also operating with the idea Revan was a woman, if only so that they remembered to keep the gender open.
 * Then again, Male Revan and Carth strike up a huge bromance in the game. Partly because of the attempt to keep gender ambiguous except when needed, it borders onto Ho Yay at times. Do not underestimate the power of the bromance.
 * Dude, this IS BioWare. Bi the Way is pretty much standard with these guys. See Sky and Silk Fox from Jade Empire and several crew members from the Normandy, Shepherd included. They managed to sneak a lesbian Jedi catgirl under Lucasarts' radar, despite the company's notoriously homophobic track record. Chances are, they would have gone there in a Pride March float, grinning all the while.

Palpatine is a Force-Homonculus created by Darth Plagueis.
His deformities are the result of being an imperfect imitation of human life & he could only use his full power by turning off the glamor that kept him looking human. He tried to remedy this by creating a successor who was half human, via Ms. Skywalker, but either due to imperfections in his own creation, or simply because he's younger & hasn't had as much experience imitating real people, Anakin's personality seems deformed & fake instead.
 * So, Jedis are alchemists?
 * Sith Alchemy is actually a totally in universe thing. In fact, alchemy in general is often identified as being one of the worst Dark side powers imaginable (possibly as it usually is an utter perversion of the Jedi's Heeling powers. This would explain Anakins miraculous birth, as well as his incredible power in the force. It would also pretty much mean that Palpanite was aware of Anakin from the start, further cementing his Chessmaster status.

Palpatine tried to take over the galaxy in a Subverted Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
At some time in his youth, Palpatine saw the galaxy in flames and the jedi were completely incapable of stopping it. He also unable to see his mysterious enemy, just that the galaxy burned. So, in response, he seeks out whatever means he could find to advance his goals, meeting his eventual Sith Master, who proceeds to tell him of the Sith Lords who had taken over large swaths of the galaxy with similar goals (conveniently leaving out the parts where they turned such places into complete shit holes and had to be toppled for the good of everyone). So, Palpatine joins the Dark Side and orchestrates the Clone Wars as part of his power bid, adding the destruction of the Jedi as part of the goal due to the pressures of the Sith teachings. Of course, the galaxy is consumed in flames as the Clone Wars spreads across it, and Palpatine eventually realizes that he foresaw his own rise to power. However, by now he has been so thoroughly corrupted by The Dark Side that he really doesn't give a damn, and is basically in power for the power trip and for kicks. So the superweapons he felt he'd need to deal with his unforeseen threat get re-purposed as excessively powerful anti-insurgency weapons, and Palpatine and his Empire needed to be defeated. However, the Subversion is that what he really saw was the destruction wrought by the Yuuzan Vong, but their lack of presence in the Force kept him from discerning the true threat. That being said, the benefits of the Empire were far outweighed by its dangers, as many of the adopted policies (like non-human subjugation and marginalization) basically meant that most of the galaxy would have been rooting for the Vong to win.

Darth Sidious is not as old as he looks
His scarred, wrinkly face is result of the corrupted Force consuming himself. In reality, in the Episode I, he probably wasn't psychologically over 25 (or the biological equivalent on his race), and in the course of Episode III, he wasn't over 35. It explains how his claims for power sounded quite youthful. To take such theory further, his original race take a while to develop physically and mentally, and has a slightly longer lifespan too, it seems.
 * Wookieepedia has Sidious starting his political career seventy years before the Battle of Yavin. If this is accurate, and assuming he was 15 when this started (he is a Naboo, and they legally have to spend their teenage years in the public service), this puts him at around ninety in Return of the Jedi. He'd be in his late forties during The Phantom Menace.

Dagobah was littered with Yoda clones.
Luke had no idea where on the planet Yoda was because the Yoda clones were about evenly spaced so that their force signature was visible from space, but couldn't be pinpointed to a single being. The nearest Yoda just went to where Luke landed, all the others kept away, and the difference in ages between the trilogies was because Clone!Yoda was estimating his age, having been accelerated aged to 700 in 18 years, and was around 900 three years later.

Palpatine formed The Empire to combat the Yuuzang Vong threat, but did that for his own personal glory
So, the superweapons and the militarization was there to be able to readily deal with the enemy, but he also allowed the oppression of the non-human races For the Evulz and also put deranged opportunists that would tear his empire apart should he not be there to deal with them, to give whoever deposed him a "screw you!" from beyond the grave.
 * He was already plotting to create the empire even before he knew of the Vong, and he knew very little about them (his only source was pretty vague) so he just used it to Dupe Thrawn into helping him. And besides, Thrawn's fleet was meant to combat unknown threats like the vong. and tarkin was the one who imagined most of the weapons (there purpose was also specifically meant to show the public "obey us or we will fucking kill you")

If Galen Marek hadn't died, he would have ended up turning the Alliance into his own personal army to replace the empire
The dark side corrupts intentions, period. Even if he was trying to do good by the end of The Force Unleashed, he was still using the Dark Side actively. We have yet to see anyone use the dark side for good without their intentions slowly mutating from "save lives" to "gain power for power's sake and rule with an iron fist, nyehehehe". It is a very good thing he pulled a Heroic Sacrifice when he did, before the corruption set in.
 * We shall see. Force Unleashed 2 is coming.
 * Hard to say. Star Wars is very inconsistent about exactly how corrupting the Dark Side. On the one hand, we know that if you give yourself over entirely to the Dark Side you're pretty much straight up Evil with a capital E. On the other hand, in spite of the Jedi's claims to the contrary there's been many, many instances of Force-users who openly dabble in the Dark Side and yet don't fall. These examples include Kyle Katarn (and yes, he came close to falling, but he continued to use the Dark Side without falling after this initial brush), Jolee Bindo (if we're to believe his own words), and Mara Jade. Ultimately, there seems to be a difference between relying on the Dark Side as your primary source of power and using it as an ancillary tool to the rest of the Force.

Darth Vader lied about Galen being dead.
Think about it. Darth Vader could easily find a use for Galen to work with him (wether he knows about it or not) while Palpatine's busy attacking the rebellion. Plus, given how much damage he's taken, Galen could have easily survived the barrage of force lightning.

Obi-Wan really thought Vader 'killed' Anakin
When Obi-Wan said that Vader having killed Anakin was true from a certain point of view, he was talking about his. His failure to redeem Anakin at the end of Rot S broke him, and over the years the only way he could handle it was to rationalise that he never could have managed it because Vader was a completely seperate personality. This also explains why he was so insistant that Luke couldn't do it either; it would bring his whole world-view tumbling down. Also, it explains why he called Anakin 'Darth' to his face in A New Hope, and also why he let Vader kill him; he's a closet Death Seeker.

Yoda's Species are the original Jedi
It seems like some of the wisest Jedi are of his species. It would also help explain their long lives, after +25,000 years of using the force, they are natural masters at prolonging their lives.

Yoda's species are THE Jedi.
Similar to how the Sith were originally a species, the Jedi were originally a species of green imp-like creatures who were sensitive to the force, which Yoda was the last of, however, it was forgotten that the Jedi were a species over time and was eventually corrupted into being an organization.

Palpatine will return in the Legacy series.
First,it would be awesome. Second, Palaptine said he was the frikkin Dark Side itself!The Jedi spirits can't hold him for long!

Joruus C'baoth was created by Darth Sidious as a Xanatos Roulette to drive Jorus over the edge.
If a Spaarti clone is grown too fast, it is impossible for the mind to adapt to the "double presence". My theory is that that also happens to the original, too. Add to that Jorus C'baoth's already-severe case of Pride, and you have a recipe for trouble.

Palpatine has a fairly specific case of Wrong Genre Savvy.
Specifically, while he generally can comprehend good on an intellectual level (contrary to what his description on the character page says), he has a flaw, so to speak, in his thinking that makes it hard for him to consider his apprentices betraying him if that betrayal is not in the traditional Sith way (in other words, it can't be a sacrifice, and it isn't done until after you've learned from your master as much as you can get from him). This explains why he didn't see Anakin's betrayal in Return of the Jedi coming (what kind of Sith apprentice betrays you with a Heroic Sacrifice of all things?), nor Vader's betrayal in the ahistoric Dark Side ending to the Revenge of the Sith video game (Vader had barely had time to learn anything from Darth Sidious at that point, and while very powerful, would not know of the less... instinctive methods practiced by the Sith).

Kyp Durron will be killed by natives of Carida.
As many people as form a jury in the GFFA. They will bring ysalamiri, naturally.

Obi-Wan is a droid.
His name should properly be written 0b1-kn0b. This is why he doesn't ever own a droid: he considers it slavery. (Technically, he's a cyborg: living flesh outside, droid on the inside, like a Terminator T-101. That explains the aging.) And don't worry about the midi-chlorians: they're simply a bedtime story told to young, impressionable Jedis. (All we ever see on screen is Qui-Gon talking about them, and a picture that could be of just about anything microscopic.)

R2-D2 is T3-M4 in a new body four thousand years later.
It happened to HK-47, at least in Star Wars: Galaxies, so we know that a droid AI could survive that long. And it would explain why R2's so quirky and creative; he's had four thousand years to craft a personality for himself. It's also why he stays around C-3PO, because he sees shades of HK-47 in him, and he wants a familiar figure in his life--after all, he's seen all his friends and acquaintances die around him. The Force had a special destiny for R2, passing from Revan's ownership, to the Exile's, and, after millenia, to Anakin Skywalker ... and to his son.
 * Wait... so R2/T3 sees shades of HK-47, a snarky, bloodthirsty assassin droid, in C-3PO, a prissy, cultured protocol droid? BS.

Thrawn Will Return
Seriously. Commander Mitth'raw'nuruodo was so tactically brilliant, he could have foreseen the betrayal of his bodyguard, Rukh. There is no way he could have not seen the shifted attitude of the Noghri after Leia's "recruitment" of them. Therefore, he had a clone of himself made, who stood in at the Battle of Bilbringi (possibly some battle before Bilbringi), while Thrawn himself went to the Hand of Thrawn to inform his aides of his plans and scout out more of the Unknown Regions, to increase his Empire of the Hand further. It is during this time that he is "killed", and by the time the Caamas Document Crisis comes around, he is still out and about. He has instructed his aides at the Hand of Thrawn to play coy about his continued survival, so by the time Mara and Luke come to Nirauan, they are told false information about Thrawn and his "return". In Survivor's Quest, the people aboard Outbound Flight's remains refer to the Chiss as "the Blue Ones", not as a statement of fact, but as an honorific. However, they could not possibly have had any contact with the Chiss in the past fifty years. The conclusion? Thrawn went back to the remains and interacted somehow with the Survivors, obviously not revealing that it was him who destroyed them in the first place. Also in Survivor's Quest, Mara hints that there may be another clone of Thrawn out there; Zahn himself has admitted that should the need arise, another one could be created. However, what if this "clone" was actually the original Thrawn? The possibilities are endless. Remember, this is Thrawn we're talking about; something like this is definitely not beyond his scope.
 * Outbound Flight indicates the "blue ones" moniker comes not from Thrawn but from.
 * I think you're overestimating Thrawn.
 * I thought that Thrawn should have taken precautions after noticing a change in the Noghri (which he mentioned to Pellaeon) as well. However, much as I'd love for him to return, I don't see it in the cards. If he had foreseen that Rukh would turn on him, it would have been much easier to kick Rukh off the Chimaera than to create a clone just for Rukh to kill. Then Thrawn could have been at Bilbringi in person, and possibly even won the battle since he wouldn't have gotten assassinated halfway through it. No, the best we can hope for are more Thrawn stories set before his death and maybe, someday, the awakening of a Thrawn clone.

Nuso Esva, the 'non-human' warlord
from Choices Of One and Crisis of Faith is a Yuuzhan Vong. Precisely the kind of cunning mind and alien terror Thrawn was sent to the Unknown Regions to quell.

Jar-Jar Binks is the center of a massive propaganda campaign in the early Empire
Jar-Jar is a successful general, he voted for the Emperor's plans, he's clearly a model non-human citizen of the Empire. He belongs in the triumvirate of Imperial heroes, along with the Emperor and Darth Vader. For many of the years between ROTS and ANH, Jar-Jar was the center of a Mao-esque personality cult (with posters, songs, miracles, action figures, films, books of quotes...the works), but about 4 years before ANH, Jar-Jar fell afoul of the ruling regime. He was quickly purged, and made a 1984-style "unperson". Because of his middling position, it's not in the interest of either the Rebels or the Empire to revive his memory, so the purge of Glorious People's General Jar-Jar from history is largely successful.
 * And he's a genius!

The Clones understand the Red Shirt effect.
They're smarter than they let on. Offing the Jedi and other "main characters" increases their chances of not being killed to show how powerful some other 'main character' is.
 * The elite Arc Troopers on Munnilist were killed to show off how powerful Durge was, in a combination of The Worf Barrage and the Red Shirt effect.
 * Endor. An armored company of the most feared soldiers in the galaxy, massacred by bears.
 * You say that like bears aren't good at massacreing
 * Midget bears at that....
 * ...point.
 * In The Clone Wars series' Malevolence arc, Plo Koon is trying to save a group of clones from danger, when one of them responds with "We're clones, sir. We're meant to be expendable." This at least shows that they're aware that they're (like) Red Shirts.

R2-D2 and Chewbacca were actually high-ranking secret agents in the rebellion who used their more talkative counterparts as front men.
See this page.
 * ... I thought that was canon.

Going with more of the above, the Stormtroopers missed deliberately.
Hey, it's a guy with a laser sword that deflects blasters right at you. "Why look, I seem to be missing, and firing completely outside his reach."
 * Actually, this might be true. One episode of the Clone Wars TV series has a Battle Droid come to that conclusion. Seeing as Battle Droids are generally on par with Jar-Jar in terms of IQ, my guess is that a Stormtrooper's going to hit that conclusion a whole lot faster.

Boba Fett's friendship with Anakin contributed to Anakin's decision to help kill Windu
In Boba Fett: Pursuit, Boba Fett and Anakin befriend each other when Boba rescues Anakin from a space slug. Anakin knows of Mace's killing of Jango Fett from Obi-Wan, and later, Boba Fett pretty much becomes Vader's best buddy. So therefore I can conclude the other major factor besides Palpatine in the decision to attack Mace was Jango Fett's death.

Boba Fett is Force-sensitive to a certain degree; no one knows it though
He can use a lightsaber much like a Jedi, he fought Darth Vader with one and dueled Jaina Solo with one several years later, plus he survives so many things he must be force-sensitive.
 * Didn't save him from getting his ass kicked by a blind Han Solo, though.

Boba Fett is a Legacy Character.
Boba Fett seems to continue his bounty hunting into a ridiculously old age. But what if it's not the original? What if Boba Fett raised his own clone son as his father before him, and let him take over the mantle of "Boba Fett" when he was old enough while the original Boba retired? And then his son raises his own clone son. And they're each actually named Boba. The first son is Boba Fett Jr. then Boba Fett III, Boba Fett IV, etc.
 * The Dread Pirate Boba!

The H'nemthe mating habits were bioengineered.
If they'd had them from the beginning, males would start to feel thin and stretched after a while. This troper's guess is that the urge to eat one's husband was engineered by the Rakata either as Disproportionate Retribution for some offense or else simply For the Evulz.

Omwati are big on gallows humor
That's why Qwi swallowed the peacetime use story despite the code names.

Naboo humans mature faster.
Hence why a 14-year-old could become queen. This has some genetic component - the half-Naboo Leia became a senator at 18 (albeit with help from her father). Luke could have easily left home by 19, but his aunt and uncle, unware of his ancestry, kept him home.
 * It also explains the Dawson Casting.

in the Star Wars Galaxy it's tradition for women to enter politics as a teenager, or else not at all.
Padmé Amidala became queen at 14. Mon Mothma became senetor at 19. Leia became a senetor at 17, Leonia Tavira became a Moff at 16.

R2-D2 mostly speaks in obscenities.
Maybe C-3PO isn't just being uptight, and Artoo is dropping a Cluster F-Bomb with practically every statement. If so, those aren't just beeps. They are censor beeps. And anyone who can translate them is right to take offense.
 * Maybe he's swearing in the Star Wars equivalent of Morse Code.
 * R2-D2 is the Star Wars equivalent of Kenny McCormick. "Oh, my god! They shot R2! You bastards!"

Jar Jar became a senator of the whole Naboo system after Padme's death.
He was already a representative ("lesser senator") by the time of her death and as the one who greatly helped Palpatine to gain dictator's powers he became the only choise for a new senator. Loyal, experienced, easy controllable - just the man Palpatine needs in Imperial Senate.

Same last name, same race (Blue Twi'leks), so they're probably related somehow.

Kreia's prophecy about the end of the Mandalorians...
Was in reference to Jango Fett's death at Mace Windu's hands. Figuratively speaking, Jango Fett was officially the last of the True Mandalorians, the ones who carried on the remainder of the old Mandalorian culture. When Jango died, the original culture of the Mandalorians died with him. This would pave the way for New Mandalorians to rise up, and whilst not completely maintaining the old cultural ways, it would be a rebirth of the Mandalorians whose end Kreia prophecized, because they were supposed to decay until falling down to one man, whilst after Jango's death, they slowly but surely became stronger, and rebuilt their culture from the ashes of the old.

In that sense, they truly are one-third of a trinity between themselves, the Jedi, and the Sith. All three of them are powerful cultures consisting of many different races, and each culture has influenced the galactic stage in ways greater than any other possible culture combined.

The Jedi at Pylokam's was Tahiri's grandfather.
Let's go over the facts.

First: We know from Anakin's Quest that Tahiri's grandfather was a Jedi who hid on Tatooine sometime between Order 66 and A New Hope.

Second: Thanks to Anakin's actions in Attack of the Clones, there is a conveniently-located emotional bloodstain to mask the presence of Jedi. The closest spaceport is Mos Eisley. The Jedi would not remain too close to the Valley of the Spirits for long (anymore than Yoda would have moved into the cave where he'd slain the traitor from Bpfassh), but it would appear that proximity is important.

Third: We know from Quest that Tahiri's grandfather was slain by stormtroopers.

Fourth: We know from Nightlily that Pylokam went to see Balu, apparently to denounce a Jedi. This could have been Kenobi, but then how did the Imps get on Gramps' trail?

Conclusion: That was not Obi-Wan that Trevagg sensed at Pylokam's, but the elder Jedi Veila. Evidently, Pylokam somehow figured it out and turned him in.

Han Solo is force sensitive...
Think about it, he managed to come up with strategies that work most of the time using nothing but instinct. He managed to outsmart the emperor himself whom believed his trap on endor was a success. To top it off he manages to evade and influence Jabba The Hutt into extending his debt deadline. Not even a full powered jedi can do that to any hutt. He is simply in complete denial and claims many miracles to be luck.
 * In one of the books describing his younger days, he is able to resist a brainwashing wave by channeling his anger. Now, what does that sound like?

Han Solo is just Chewbacca's frontman

 * Think about it. Who does the actual piloting on their ship? Who does the repairs? Which one of them is tougher in a fight? Basically, who does the actual work? The only things Han handles are the business side -- meeting with people, finding jobs -- which Chewie can't do because he doesn't speak the language. We assume Han is in charge because he's a human and acts like he is, but it's totally in-character for him to act that way regardless of the truth; Chewie is neither capable of correcting that impression (because of the language barrier) nor interested in it as long as Han continues to do his job and pull in money, but he's shown to be perfectly willing to laugh at Han -- in fact, if anything, he probably finds Han's posturing to be amusing, and lets him do it because he knows other humans will be more likely to hire him if they believe a human is in charge. Han's BS lines to Obi Wan (using 'parsecs' as a unit of time) show that he doesn't really know the first thing about navigation -- he's just there to bring in jobs for the Wookie.

The Droids are missing on purpose.
Let's face it, Palpatine does not want to risk screwing his plan due to a droid shooting Anakin. Or any other character essential to his plans. Being the Magnificent Bastard and Chessmaster that he is, he secretly orders the droids to "go easy" on Anakin and co. The droids act stupid, so no-one suspects a thing. Yes, Plot Armor is in order, but I'm talking in-universe. Similarly, the Stormtroopers follow suit so Luke will turn evil one day.

R2D2 is the Reincarnation of Darth Plagueis and the chessmaster behind everything.
Betrayed by his apprentice Darth Sidious, he manage to implant his consciousness into a droid : R2D2.

All the Star War saga is a Gambit Roulette by R 2 Plagueis to take his sweet revenge.

Evidences showing us that R2D2 is Darth Plagueis are :
 * He can use the force ( "Hold your fire. There are no life forms. It must have been short-Circuited." sound a lot like "These are not the droids your looking for." )


 * He know all the access code to every door/computer ever !


 * He is a badass warrior, beating TWO B2 super battle droid easily. Something a simple astromech should not be able to do.

So when Darth Plagueis became Droid Plagueis, he use his midi-chlorian manipulation to create Anakin, to bring forth the end of his apprentice. Or to teach him a new lesson. Hard to say if a sith want to kill you or teach you.

R2D2 is...
A Daleck that has taken some anger management courses.

Mara Jade Skywalker is the preincarnation of Mary Jane Watson
Just because the names sound so similar. Mary Jane, Mara Jade. Plus if Mary Jane ever marries Spiderman she'll be Mary Jane Parker which sounds pretty close to Mara Jade Skywalker.
 * Mara has a redheaded child, she wins.
 * Considering Luke and Peter have a lot of the same idea as to what to do with Great Power, and what not to have it do to you? (I'm ignoring that really dumb "deal with the Devil" arc, like many other fen)
 * And after that, Mara/Mary became Ginny Weasley.
 * Since Ginny and Mary Jane are both more or less modern, this would be a double incarnation, or a reincarnation that occurs beyond the forward progression of time.
 * Then their combined power in the world created Amelia Pond.

Star Wars is in fact set many thousands of years after Foundation, in the same universe
First off, Foundation's Edge/Foundation and Earth never happened. They were some really strange fever dreams Salvor Hardin had one night, and in reality, the Second Empire was formed after a thousand years as planned. Over time, people were genetically engineered to fit their specific planets, thus producing the many "alien species" in the Star Wars universe (that's why so many of them are humanoid). The Second Foundation slowly morphed into the Jedi Order, their psycho-historical powers of prediction atrophying as the galaxy settled into stasis. Trantor was renamed Coruscant after it was rebuilt, and a unified government again conquered the galaxy. The Sith are cultists of the Mule, and in some ways, the Imperial coup can be seen as a reaction of the technocratic First Foundation elements against the sociological (but technologically static) Second Foundation. Unless there's a true Second Foundation hiding out somewhere that's manipulating all the events behind the scenes...

The story is a Future Imperfect version of the fall of the Galactic Empire from Isaac Asimov's Foundation series.
It's written long after the thousand-year interregnum, by which point the people refuse to believe that such a grand empire could have fallen just due to social forces and systemic corruption; there have to have been great heroes and foul villains! Coruscant is Trantor, of course. The Sith are based off the Mule, while the Empire is a combination of his army, that of Bel Riose, and the aggressors in several other, smaller conflicts of the era. The Rebel Alliance is a conflation of the Independent Traders and the Foundation. Obi-Wan and Yoda are both Hari Seldon; this is especially noticeable where the ghostly Obi-Wan counsels Luke, as Seldon's hologram did the Foundation. Luke himself is an entirely fictional character, based off an older heroic ballad, while Darth Vader is actually taken largely from sightings of R. Daneel Olivaw.
 * George Lucas pretty much openly admits Asimov's Foundation was a big inspiration for Star Wars, as well as taking inspiration directly from Asimov's inspirations in turn (namely The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire).
 * The problem with this is that Asimov's Galactic Empire is our future, while Star Wars is "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away". Unless you want to play with the idea that Asimov's Galactic Empire is really an alternate universe on a different time line, so when they talk about Earth, it's not our Earth but some other. Then again, maybe the narrator is lying and it isn't "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away", which would explain how they have humans...unless maybe some Star Wars DNA managed to cross to our galaxy and land on Earth a few million years ago. As to how they speak English...I guess we have to assume that it is translated for us movie goers.
 * No, see, if Star Wars was made as a pseudo-history of the Foundation, then naturally it would be something that happened a long time ago, from their perspective. From our place in history, it happened millions of years into the future, after the Empire and the Foundation's entire histories. It just happens that George Lucas's subconscious has predicted this future movie exactly.

Han Solo is a 400+ year old Indiana Jones.
Naturally, this is only possible if the above is true.
 * FACT: Person in Indiana Jones' suit is actually seen on Tatooine, in Episode I, watching Pod-racing.
 * Jossed by the Expanded Universe novel The Paradise Snare, which deals with Han's youth, among many other things. Of course, it is possible that Indiana Jones was somehow de-aged to the state of a child and his memories wiped (and Han does lack childhood memories)... but that, arguably, would make them two different personalities that kinda-sorta shared the same body.
 * Too bad. It certainly would explain how he can get out of all those situations that no one could survive.
 * Unless he's a Time Lord.
 * Or Indy could be a descendant of Solo through the power of colony ships and uncanny family resemblance.

Star Wars Exists In A Parallel Universe...
...in which Indiana Jones and travels to this universe's past, is granted immortality  and is transformed into a child, grows up to be Han Solo, and becomes his own ancestor.

The Transformers exist in the Star Wars universe.
Aside from the "Star Wars Transformers" toys (which are different from real Transformers), there are two sentient races of robots in the Star Wars EU: the Silentium and the Abominor. They are diametrically opposed. The one Abominor that we see, the Great Heep, isn't really an Abominor -- he's a MacGuffin of the week from the old show. (That, or he's a mode-locked Decepticon.) While we never see any of the Silentium transform, they could easily just be holding it back.

The Empire fended off a Dalek attack years ago.
Some time between ROTS and ANH, the Galactic Empire was attacked by Daleks. Some of them even attempted infiltration by masquerading their "travel machines" as repair droids. However, they were no match for Darth Vader and were promptly exterminated. In the aftermath of the attack, the Emperor decided that for security reasons, he couldn't allow just any droid to climb up stairs, and ordered their hovering equipment removed. That's why R2-D2 can't E-LE-VATE anymore.

The Yuuzhan Vong are Tyranids
Come on. A species of intergalactic conquerors that uses organic technology, hopelessly outmatch the inhabitants of the galaxy they invade and whose sole purpose is to annihilate everything in sight. The Vong even have a mentality that is very similar to a Hive Mind.
 * Yuuzang Vong aren't that united. Scratch the surface, they have a lot of internal bickering and a caste based system which include rejects. I think they may be Tau genestealers though, and because Tau are so resistant to mental psychic attacks, the Tyranids failed to establish their hive mind control over them. They then reversed engineered the Tyranid organic technology...

Star Wars and the Old Battlestar Galactica are in the same universe.
So, the Star Wars Galaxy was happened across by the Atlantean/Lemurian/other colonists, who seeded the worlds with humans. Then whatever made people forget about this happened, resulting in a very fractious human population with no memory of their origins. So the litigation that Lucas Film took against them was entirely frivolous!

The Whills were the marble-playing aliens at the end of MIB
And that galaxy/universe everyone was chasing after?...

Yoda is in fact a Skrull
Yoda's race has been repeatedly kept secret by Lucas, for what end now that the trilogies are over who knows, now he kind of looks like a skrull and wouldn't it be ironic if the most influential and well hidden skrull doesn't even shapeshift.

Luke had the same "safe with family" blood pact as Harry Potter.
Padme sacrificed her spirit so that Luke would be protected from harm as long as he was with family, not realizing that Anakin was at that exact time slaughtering a school full of jedi kids. It drew his family to him, and Obi-Wan had to leave him with Owen's family to stop Vader (or rater, Anakin-gone-bad) from finding him right away. Leia was not Blessed with Suck, so she got to go with Senator Organa.
 * Impossible. He would have been sent to Padme's family if this were true. Owen's family has no blood connection to Luke, and their connection by marriage is to Anakin.

Star Wars is Harry Potter
And Jedi are wizards. Look, Force sensitivity runs in the family, but also happens to children of people with absolutely mundane ancestry, and it influences people even when they're unaware of it. Because HP is newer than SW, I assume this is more of a WMG of Harry Potter: Rowling imagined the distant ancestors of the Jedi. Lightsabers are highly-evolved form of wands.
 * The characters:
 * Luke = Harry: The Hero - duh.
 * Han = Ron: Supporting male lead with snarky personality.
 * Leia = Hermione: Female lead in a Slap Slap Kiss relationship with Han/Ron.
 * Yoda = Dumbledore: Whimsical mentor figure.
 * Palpatine = Riddle/Voldemort: Charismatic guy loved by everyone until he shows his True Colors as a cackling sorcerer and becomes the Big Bad.
 * Vader = Snape: Seduced by The Dark Side when he was a young man Punishes people unfairly.
 * Padmé = Lily: Love of Vader/Snape's life whom he lost through his association with The Dark Side. Mother of Luke/Harry.
 * Mara Jade = Ginny: Fiery Redhead girlfriend of the hero. At one point, an agent of Palpatine/Riddle.
 * Obi-Wan = Hagrid: Bearded guy who lives in a hut and recruits the hero by telling him a bunch of lies about his past.
 * Groan. Can't wait to see Harry's hand chopped.

Yoda is a goblin.
I don't have a whole lot to support this except: little green monster dude.
 * OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!!!
 * Then where's David Bowie?
 * Even better. What if...?

Yoda is what happens if you get Gizmo wet or feed him after midnight

 * Only in some superevolved, benevolent stage.

Battlestar Galactica, Dune, Star Wars, The Terminator, and The Wheel of Time all take place in the same universe.
The Start:

Battlestar Galactica:
 * The battle between Humans and Machines is a cycle that repeats itself over and over again in time.
 * At the end of the series, the Humans land on our Earth and choose to forsake all technology. This is 150,000 before our present. Eventually humans rise in technology and create a sentient machine.

The Terminator:
 * The entire Machine War is just another repetition of the BSG Cycle.
 * John Connor leads the Resistance to victory over Skynet. However, the decades of radiation-induced genetic drift leads to humans developing the ability to access the One Power.

The Wheel of Time:
 * Time exists as seven Ages. In each Age a specific set of events always occur, even if other details vary. There are certain people, souls, who always appear to drive these events. One of these is basically the Messiah who comes about whenever humanity is in dire need, and usually heralds the end of an Age- this soul is known as the Dragon.
 * The First Age, our age, is implied to have ended in brutal warfare (the Machine War). John Connor was the Dragon for the First Age, and saved the human race while ushering in the Second Age.

Star Wars:
 * We know from Terminator Salvation that there are humans who donâ€™t believe the Resistance can defeat Skynet. A group of these people conspire to go back in time in order to escape the machines. They succeed, but mess up the space-time coordinates and end up on the planet that eventually becomes Coruscant.

Dune:
 * During the Yuuzhan Vong War, a group of humans flees the galaxy. They end up in another galaxy utterly devoid of sentient life. They eventually build sentient machines. These machines enslave humanity (another repetition of the BSG Cycle). The humans rise up and annihilate the machines in a two-generation galactic war called the Butlerian Jihad. This causes the humans to forsake all powerful computers- including ones that could calculate FTL jumps. This leads to the Dune universe relying on spice that allows them to go faster-than-light.

Back to The Start:

There are two ways to end up back at BSG, one from Star Wars and one from Dune

Star Wars Path:
 * Sometime in the millennia after the Yuuzhan Vong War, some great cataclysm utterly devastates the galaxy beyond all repair. Survivors flee to another galaxy and settle on a large habitable world. They call this world Kobol and the Thirteen Lords of it are the last members of the Jedi Order or other Force-using faction.

Dune Path:
 * During the Butlerian Jihad, some humans flee the galaxy and end up on a planet called Kobol. Itâ€™s Thirteen Lords are the last Spacing Guild Navigators.
 * My reaction to Kreia was "Someone left the Box of Pain and Gom Jabbar in her other robes."

Revan's mindwiped identity was that of Guybrush Threepwood, from Monkey Island

 * To be (re)trained as a Jedi, Revan had to complete The Three Trials (compare to The Secret of Monkey Island).
 * The Quest for the Star Forge involves Revan searching different planets for four pieces of a Star Map (compare to Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge).
 * When the Four Map Pieces are combined, they lead to an object of unimaginable wealth and power, but which turns out to actually be an object of confusion and destruction. (compare Big Whoop to the Star Forge)
 * The most powerful mÃªlÃ©e weapon in the early section of the game is a Prototype Vibroblade, which is specifically made for "the user on a budget". Compare to Guybrush's assortment of low-quality tools, including a shovel made "For the treasure hunter on a budget."
 * Revan is a kleptomaniac.
 * Guybrush has shown evidence of Jedi knowledge, including the Jedi Mind Trick.
 * It is canon that Revan redeemed Ajunta Pall, leading him back to the Light. For this to be possible, Revan must have developed a high Charisma and Persuade skill. Scoundrel is the only non-Jedi class that has Persuade as a class skill. A scoundrel is a pirate.
 * Revan's scoundrel clothing is a fancy red jacket, similar to one of Guybrush's in Escape from Monkey Island. To avoid catching the notice of Sith soldiers on Taris, Revan would have needed nonmilitary style casual clothing: this excludes the Soldier's uniform.
 * No Basic-speaking character ever actually says Revan's assumed name outloud. They clearly cannot quite remember it. The few alien-language speaking characters who do say it manage to muddle the pronunciation terribly, so that it sounds nothing like "Guybrush Threepwood". This is a problem that applies almost exclusively to Guybrush.
 * Similarly, if Revan makes fun of Nemo's name on Dantooine, Nemo responds that names are of little importance, and that "you of all people should know that." This occurs while Revan is still using his assumed name--Guybrush Threepwood.
 * On Taris, Revan encounters someone named Largo. Coincidence?
 * If Revan arrives on Korriban after rediscovering his identity, and he tries to tell the Sith that he is actually Darth Revan, no one takes him seriously. No one. This is a problem that applies almost exclusively to Guybrush.

The characters of Star Wars are the Ancients.
In Shining Force, the Ancients combine forces to defeat the Dark Dragon, but only manage to seal him away. In movie canon, all we see is Sidious thrown into a pit, followed by a surge of energy. In EU, he tries to come back from death, and claims he cannot be defeated. 1000 years from the Battle of Yavin, a Sith Lord named Darksol goes to the planet of Rune, where he finds the facilities needed to resurrect Sidious, the Dark Dragon of the Force. He slowly manipulates the King of Protectora on Rune, and eventually influences him to invade a nearby friendly kingdom to gain access to the Ancient city that can bring back Sidious. This is backed up by the Ancients having guns, magic powers, lasers, and robots. In fact, this also explains a great deal about the anachronism involved.

Abeloth is an Instrumentality
Think about it: All these people returning to her, much like Angels return to Adam. (Or Lilith.) And we know she can absorb them and take on their personalities, like she did with Callista. Plus, with how kriffed-up Legacy Of The Force was, complete with Shotacon, a father letting his son go through all this suffering, a lot of clones, and a climactic battle between two people who understand each other better than anyone else understands the other...Yeah.

The Celestials are the Ancients, and Star Wars is in the distant past of the Stargate Verse
Consider that Humans in Star Wars have an unknown origin. Consider next that the Celestials are a mysterious race of beings who supposedly populated several planets across the Star Wars galaxy with Humans. Then, of course, there's the fact that Celestials left behind several mysterious, super-advanced technologies such as Centerpoint Station and had an unparalleled mastery of interstellar travel.

In the Stargate universe, Humans have a known origin (Earth/Tau'ri) but they were still seeded across the galaxy by the Ancients (and later the Goa'uld, of course, who play a similar role here to the Builders/Rakata). Furthermore, just like the Celestials the Ancients were the masters of interstellar travel and left behind numerous unexplained relics of immense power (the eponymous Stargates, Destiny, Atlantis, etc.).

We already know the Ancients colonized several galaxies, so it's not a stretch to say they could have colonized both Earth and a "galaxy far, far away." We already known the Ancients obtained the ability of ascension and the Celestials are hinted to have done something similar (thereby explaining their mysterious absence). So it doesn't seem like that big of a stretch (so long as we ignore the obvious fact that this is WMG and not serious canon we're discussing) to suppose the Celestials are the Ancients.

Simon the Killer Ewok from Galactic Battlegrounds is a universe- and species-displaced Simon the Digger.
Seriously, how could an Ewok be that badass?

The Star Wars universe is Xen from the past.
Think about it. Humans and Jedi in particularwere killed out by a new breed of force-users that all could shoot lightning and throw people twenty yards: the vortigaunts. And what better crystal to use to start a resonance cascade than the high-energy Illium crystals the Jedi use to make lightsabers?

Anakin and Luke are reincarnated from Sephiroth and Cloud Strife.
It's commonly believed that souls travel in groups, so it's not that far-fetched to imagine Seph and Cloud being father and son in a future life. Also, there's a lot of evidence Anakin in the prequels, especially Sith, is based to some extent on Sephiroth, while Cloud is obviously based on Luke in the same way practically all Final Fantasy protagonists are.

The portal games are happening in the Star Wars universe, just in our galaxy, and close by.
Watch Episode 4. When the droids are heading toward the Millennium Falcon. That's right...there in the background: Weighted companion cubes! You also see a variation of them on the death star. They're black and the other ones are yellow but the patterning and size are exactly correct.

Notice that the G La DOS, the sentries, and Wheatley both come off with very droidtastic voices.

Star Wars takes place before Halo

 * Remember how in the halo universe humans came from another galaxy?

Humans in the star wars galaxy were natives to a planet known as Krull

 * The slayers in that film were early Yuuzhan Vong, Colwyn's control of fire and the glaive were force techniques, and the son of the Prince and Princess destined to rule the Galaxy? his name was Palpatine.

The TRANSFORMERS: STAR WARS/ TRANSFORMERS: CROSSOVERS line is canon, we just never saw the Cybertronians talk or transform
Here is a timeline:
 * The figures that match Clone Wars-era characters and vehicles were mostly the original autobots. For example:
 * Obi-Wan's Starfighter=Optimus Prime
 * Anakin's Starfighter=Bumblebee
 * General Grievous' Starfighter=Megatron
 * Grevious' Wheelbike=Soundwave
 * The Various Jedi Starfighters=The original Autobot Cars/ mini-vehicles
 * Magna Guard Starfighter=Seekers
 * Cad Bane's Starfighter=Acid Storm (As he was basically an elite, green-colored Seeker)
 * Slave 1=Axor (Not actually a G1 character; Looks just like a blue/purple Lockdown; see below)
 * Darth Maul's Infiltrator=Sideways
 * AT-T Es=Omega Supreme (Captain Rex's), Omega Sentinels/Gaurdian Robots (Others)
 * AAT tanks=Insecticons
 * Republic Starfighters=Any flying Autobot, take you pick, though I pictured the "Space Whale" painted ARC-170 as Jetfire
 * Original Trilogy figures are mostly characters from the 1986 movie:
 * Obi-Wan's Blue Starfighter=Ultra Magnus
 * Luke's X-Wing/Snowspeeder=Hot Rod
 * Millenium Falcon:
 * Han Solo half=Springer
 * Chewbacca Half=Grimlock
 * Darth Vader's Black Jedi Starfighter=Shattered Glass Bumblebee
 * Vader's TIE Advanced=Cyclonus (The Alternate-colored version is "Armada")
 * TIE Bombers=One is Scourge, the rest are sweeps
 * AT-AT=Only one is a transformer, and it's Trypticon
 * Slave-1=Lockdown (Axor was destroyed at some point and Lockdown, his mentor, shows up to replace him)
 * Palpatine's shuttle=Galvatron (The Black-colored figure is Galvatron II from the comics)
 * Death Star=Unicron (Obvious, really)
 * The Decepticons join forces with the newly-formed Confederations of Independent Systems.
 * The Decepticons tell CIS leaders about the Matrix of Leadership, which can serve as a near-endless supply of energy and is a powerful Force amplifier.
 * A CIS leader comes out about the Decepticons and bluffs about having the Matrix
 * A terrorist organization attacks a CIS outpost to search for the matrix.
 * The attack fails, but the CIS denies knowing of any "Decepticons" or a "Matrix", and the leader is assassinated.
 * A large ship, known as the "Ark", is found drifting through space by a Republic cruiser. The hibernating Autobots inside are awoken and side with the Republic. Not wanting another terrorist attack, the Autobots are declared a secret.
 * At some point, Jango Fett begins to correspond with Decepticon Lockdown, who sends his protege to serve as Jango's partner.
 * Darth Sidious partners his apprentice, Darth Maul, with a cybertronian named "Sideways". Due to his connection to an entity named "Unicron", Sideways is force-sensitive.
 * The Cybertronians are bonded with various leaders and high-ranking officers on both sides. Some even receive Jedi or Sith training.
 * Jango Fett is killed and Boba Fett becomes his partner.
 * More Cybertronians come out of hiding and take sides.
 * Order 66 is executed and Autobots are ordered to be captured or terminated.
 * Decepticons and captured Autobots are reformatted into new Imperial forms.
 * Some Autobots escape capture and go into hiding alongside Jedi
 * Optimus Prime is destroyed, but passes the matrix on to his brother, Ultra Magnus, who goes underground
 * The Emperor, failing to acquire the Matrix, summons Unicron's spark and stores it in the Death Star.
 * Axor is destroyed and Lockdown replaces him as Boba Fett's partner.
 * The Rebel Alliance is formed by Galen Marek and several Autobots join, including Ultra Magnus.
 * Magnus is killed, and passes the matrix to hot rod, who is partnered with Luke Skywalker.
 * Unicron is destroyed by Luke and Hot Rod
 * Optimus is revived, and takes the form of the Millennium Falcon, and destroys Unicron, again.
 * The Republic is restored, and the Decepticons exiled.

Earth does exist in the galaxy, but it is better known as Arda
By "a long, long time ago" they mean roughly 3000 years, from when is up to you.

Screw "A long time ago".
The events of Star Wars are in the present or future. They are referred to as occurring "A long time ago" because the individuals retelling these events are even further in the future.
 * Alternative non-displacement in space rather than time: A long time ago, our galaxy was far, far away.
 * This also allows Coruscant or Tatooine to be Earth.
 * No! Humans are immigrants! The Neanderthals were native inhabitants from this planet and we wiped them out.
 * For the latter, the two-suns fable was added later; stories told and retold tend to get combined with local elements.
 * In Attack of the Clones, Palpatine makes reference to "this Republic which has stood for a thousand years". This could be considered a retcon of the earlier "over a thousand generations", if you want to place the films as close to the present as possible.
 * The Republic is actually 25,000 years old, and gets reorganized every so often. Palpatine was referring to the last reorganization, the Ruusan Reformation, 1000 years or so before Episode 3. This is the official explanation.
 * On the other hand, it's never stated in the films that the Republic was founded by humans.
 * Actually, it was founded by an alliance of Humans and Duros, the first two spacefaring species in that section of the Galaxy. (Though there were older galaxy-spanning governments by then-extinct species.)
 * This is the plot of a book that was never published called Alien Exodus. It was never published for numerous reasons (would have seemed silly, ignored current EU continuity, etc).
 * As for details, the descendants of Curtis Henderson (American Graffiti) escape the dystopian earth of THX-1138, get enslaved by Insect Overlords in some distant galaxy, and eventually overthrow them and found Corellia. The man leading the revolution is nicknamed "Skywalker" by his people. Seriously.
 * Well, if you read the Ultimate Guide to Vehicles, the manufacturer's logos from Corellia do look like they could pass for space shuttle mission patches.
 * The ORIGINAL Teaser from 1976 tells us that "Somewhere in space, this may all be happening right now..."
 * According to the Infinities story Into the Great Unknown, Star Wars takes place about 126 years before Indiana Jones. Since the trend lately has been to incorporate as much stuff from official materials into the canon until contradicted by higher-level material, it could be argued that this fact is canon. If so, that hardly seems like a long time in a galaxy where the average government regime lasts ten thousand years.
 * The problem with that theory is, that story is contradicted by higher level material, namely the New Jedi Order series. Dus to the deaths of certain characters, the events of Onto the Great Unknown are impossible to reconcile with other canon. And besides, that story was just silly.
 * In Shadows of the Empire, there's a ship called the Korolev. Nobody of that name in the Star Wars galaxy. A rocket pioneer by that name from the real world. Interesting.
 * It always bugged this troper how despite its setting as being separate from Earth, characters in various Star Wars media use phrases such as "Achilles Heel".
 * Of course, we can counter that with this
 * Geez, it's just the standard Translation Convention at work, nothing to get your mynocks in a sarlacc about.
 * NOBODY in the WHOLE GALAXY? Wow. Just... wow. Must have taken you years of research to check every name... except for the trillions of unnamed inhabitants of twenty million whole worlds, of course. Besides, Star Wars has a buttload of things named after real-world people, places, and concepts as an in-joke. Grabbing any one and saying "this proves they're us!" is... wow, just wow.
 * Then again, they seem to use metric, and in one novel someone refers to "Joules."
 * The Milky Way is the Galaxy, and the time is the present. The reason we don't have any contact with the Republic or anybody else, is that Earth is one the most distant and forgotten planets in the Galaxy, to the point we don't remember any past contacts with the republic.
 * See also the Star Wars entry under Space Jews, particularly regarding the "Ferrets."
 * Alternatively, time is cyclical in Star Wars, so it's both the future and the past.
 * Maybe the narrator is lying and it isn't "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away", which would explain how they have humans...unless maybe some Star Wars DNA managed to cross to our galaxy and land on Earth a few million years ago. As to how they speak English...I guess we have to assume that it is translated for us movie goers. Same thing with "Achilles Heel", could be their version was just translated for us. That's the explanation that Tolkien gives for his stuff.
 * You're all making this much too complicated: by definition, the terms "a long time ago" and "far, far away" are synonymous, since space and time are the same thing. Likewise, all faster-than-light travel is, by definition, a form of time-travel into the past. So at some point in the future of planet Earth, human beings will develop faster-than-light travel, and eventually use it to travel to and colonize distant galaxies. Of course, the colonists will arrive in those other galaxies long before they left ours. As such, the events depicted in the films are occurring "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away," from the perspective of our galaxy. So you see, it's really simple.
 * Hyperspace is a form of extra-dimensional warp drive, it would fall under 'Apparent' FTL travel and not real FTL travel. Time travel is not a consequence of Star Wars' Hyperdrive.
 * The reason why there are Rubber Forehead Aliens? They're humans who, due to evolution/genetic engineering, have become new species to adapt to the many planets. There are some exceptions, like Plo Koon(who can't survive in oxygen).

Living beings of Earth are "transparent" to the Force, like the Yuuzhan Vong
Episode 1 tells us that the Force is mediated by the midichlorians, sorts of bacteria living into the cells of every living creature (of the Star Wars galaxy). But the cells of the living beings of Earth contain nothing of the sort: they contain mitochondria and (in the case of plants) chloroplasts, but no midichlorians. This means that if a Jedi (or a Sith) ever happened to visit Earth, he would not be able to feel any life on it. To him, looking at an Earth human would feel like looking at an animatronic robot: he would see something that looks like a human, but he would (mistakenly) "know" that the human he is looking at is not real. In the same way, a Jedi would never be able to use his mind tricks on humans of Earth, because his midichlorians would not have any other midichlorian to communicate to, and would not have any advantage in combat (like being able to read the intentions of his opponent and prevent them) for the same reason.
 * And this is why we're the most distant and forgotten planet in the Galaxy. They think it's barren and lifeless.

If we take this wild guess to the extreme, we reach an interesting conclusion...

The Yuuzhan Vong are the humans of Earth, and Yuuzhan Tar is Earth
The Yuuzhan Vong come from outside the Star Wars galaxy (a galaxy far, far away... hmmm) and are transparent to the Force. Just like humans of Earth are supposed to be, if the wild guess above is correct. Let some millennia pass starting from now, enough for humans to mutate physically, develop their own biotechnology and a constructed language spoken by every individual, based on Basic and Latin. This would make the expression "Yuuzhan Vong" an evolution of "human vulgus", where "vulgus" is Latin for "people". And "Yuuzhan Tar" would be "human terra", where "terra" is Latin for "Earth".
 * Then how did we go from iron-based blood to copper-based?

All of Lucas films are linked together ala The Dark Tower

 * Earth is the original home of the Human species. A group of refugees and dissidents from Earth commandeer a spacecraft and flee a computer-controlled society (a society which, apparently, will later become the setting of George Lucas's first film, THX 1138). They accidentally travel backwards through time and through intergalactic space to arrive in the Star Wars galaxy. American Graffiti, and possibly Willow are linked as well.

The humans in the Galaxy Far, Far Away were brought there from Earth in prehistoric times by aliens.
It's established in the Expanded Universe books that nobody really knows exactly where humans came from originally. Several planets have claimed it was them, but the evidence is shaky. Alien abduction would go a long way to explaining it. Additionally, Star Wars does take place in the Indy universe, and all the supernatural relics he chases after were actually left there by the aliens who brought humanity to the Galaxy Far, Far Away.
 * Partially coroborrated in that there are many animals present in the galaxy canonically that exist here, horses exist on several planets and so do many types of fowl.
 * Possibly, these are the same aliens.
 * And the name of their species was "Whills".

In an alternate universe, Star Wars isn't real.
Think about it. If the number of universes is infinite, there has to be at least one in which the events of Star Wars don't happen exactly as depicted in the movies.
 * In all probability, universes where Hollywood films exist but Star Wars doesn't would actually outnumber the ones where Star Wars does exist. However, most of those universes would probably have science fiction franchises seen the same way Star Wars is seen in our own reality.
 * And in one of those universes, a roleplaying game happens to have uncanny similartites to Star Wars' plot.
 * There could be an infinite number of universes that are exactly the same as the Star Wars, except our freakish exception.
 * According to Star Wars canon, its events take place "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away." No mention is made of it taking place in another universe. So the best assumption to make is that Star Wars is real in our universe, but not necessarily in any other.

Darth Sidious a.k.a. Emperor Palpatine is George Lucas.
"Everything that has transpired has done so according to my design."
 * One could also see Star Wars as the monomythic depiction of the Death of the Author and the Birth of the Reader. Anakin Skywalker fulfils the prophecy to bring balance to the Force by accomplishing both of the above. The Reader is, naturally, Luke Skywalker, since the secret to Force Ghost-hood is to die in front of him.
 * Alternatively, the "Reader" is C-3P0, reading and translating R2-D2's recording (not writing) of the events portrayed in the films to the Shaman of the Whills - who is William Shatner.

George Lucas is an outwardly homophobic closet homosexual.
"Sith" is a variant spelling of the word "Sidhe," Gaelic for "fairy." "Fairy" is a slang term for a male homosexual. Why do homosexuals have "Dark Lords?" George depicted them as evil and as the enemy of the conservative, Presbyterian Jedi, including the red-blooded Luke, whose heterosexuality is so entrenched that he even makes out with his own sister! Of course, George creates a sympathetic "Sith Lord" to defeat the big bad "Sith Lord" as a symbolic gesture of his own conflicted sexuality. This also explains Ziro the Hutt. O_O
 * Always thought it was an anagram for... Oh, nevermind.
 * And the Expanded Universe continues this by giving Luke one woman after another. Have you noticed that Palpatine's interest in Anakin, Mara, and Luke more than qualifies him as a Depraved Bisexual with strong pedophilic tendencies?
 * R2-D2 & C-P 3 O, the worlds most famous gay robots. That is all.

The Imperial March is the Empire's nation anthem/battle hymn
It's not just background music, it's actually being played on the speakers of the ships.
 * And the in universe composer was probably someone like Jo'n Whillams.
 * This was actually established in a Han Solo novel, where it's said to be the official miltary anthem.

George Lucas has a mutilation fetish
between the 6 movies in both trilogies just how many people get limbs cut off/chopped in half/decapitated with a lightsaber? But he does have an odd tendency towards right hands over other types of mutilation
 * Given how thoroughly devastating they are at cutting things, severing a limb is about the only non-lethal wound that a lightsaber can reasonably inflict. If you want to show somebody getting wounded but not deaded in lightsaber combat, you've pretty much got to chop something off. As for the prevalence of right hands getting the chop, that's because most people are right-handed -- its the hand they're holding their weapon in, so its the hand an attacker is going to go for if he has for some reason decided to not just chop the enemy in half.

Humans arn't from Earth but from the Star Wars Universe
Think about it some time (depending on your interpretation of "A long time ago") a human colony was sent on a galactic expedition to explore uncharted land sort of along the lines of what Outbound Flight was they land on a the third planet in a remote system in a remote galaxy maybe crash landed (depending on the nature of the ship think it may have been the meteor?) somehow they built a settlement called "Atlantis" and we all know what happened there. after the sinking there are some possibilities that survivors made it to land and due to the harsh conditions became Neanderthuls. the people who are "psychics" "prophets" or where otherwise thougth to have supernatural abilities were actually force sensitive and thee reason they don't exist i n abundance today is because they are either dormant or due to being away from the galaxy far far away they newborns stopped getting midichlorians note "Binds the galaxy together" not the universe. the Galaxy still we have some force sensitives who bring us visions of the events that occurred or will occur in the galaxy such as George Lucas and other EU writers. also Harrison Ford was descended from ancient Corellians.

In combination with the usual 'It takes place in the Future' WMGs: Tatooine is the far-future Earth.
Knights of the Old Republic has a Sidequest implying that some or all humans are descended from Sand People slaves taken by the Rakata, before they bombed the planet down to glass. This makes Tatooine Humanity's homeworld, and therefore Earth post silica-based remodelling. This explains why so much important stuff happens there: even though nobody remembers what it originally was, being the birthplace of the dominant species in the Galaxy has left Tatooine with a disproportionate influence in the Force, making it a crossroads of fate. The fact there are two suns is because at some point somebody stellified Jupiter.
 * They must have moved it, too, to keep the two suns together in the sky. Or maybe this was an attempt to lengthen the Sun's lifespan by turning it into two smaller, cooler, less hydrogen-intensive stars.
 * "You bastards! You blew it up!"

We created all the aliens seen in Star Wars.
Yet another "it's the future" WMG: all of the lifeforms in the Galaxy are created by, or are, far-future post-humans, who Terraform millions of planets seeded with genetically varied life, including a few "heirloom" original-stock humans recreated for study of the posthumans' ancient roots. The Midichlorians are far-future biotechnology, originally developed as a communications system, but which escaped into the populace and mutated into a quantum energy-transfer array that interfaces (imperfectly) with the nervous system, thus using "the force" requires a great deal of practice and mental discipline or intense focus; and even then subconscious influences can creep in. At some point a cataclysm, war, or other galaxy-wide event reduced the planets to stone age barbarism, destroyed all traced of the superrace, and everyone had to start from scratch. Alternately, prhaps the posthumans decided to give their creations a chance to develop on their own, and stripped away all of their own technology and left to start again elsewere or Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence. However, a few items were left behind and found, allowing the inhabitants-- once they developed enough technological savvy -- to reverse-engineer hyperdrive, Artificial Gravity, Strong AI brains, and a few other devices, while still using relatively crude machines and methods for other purposes.
 * Similarly, the Sith created all the aliens. That's why there are reptiles with breasts, carnivorous bunnies, and other craziness.
 * Sooooo...StarWars and Red Dwarf take place in the same universe?

The Journal of the Whills is Wikipedia
I believe this speaks for itself.
 * Or Wookieepedia.

It's all a bunch of crazy myths that might or might not be true.
The "present time" is many thousands of years after the events of the movies; ergo, what we see happening in the movies, the games, and the books are only representative of what sort of happened, and much of it might never have happened at all. In other words, Vader, Luke, and the other major players are like the heroes and villains of Greek epics like The Odyssey and such, some of the really old events like the stuff around the founding of the Republic and the Jedi Order are only documented in the form of religious holy books like the Bible and stuff.

Star Wars happens before the big bang
Well, it does happen 'a long time ago'...
 * *knock knock knock* "Vader!" *knock knock knock* "Vader!" *knock knock knock* "Vader!"

Yoda's species is officially unnamed because it would be a racial slur.
Wookieepedia's entry for Yoda's species states: "For reasons unknown, George Lucas maintains a strict policy of keeping the history, name, origin, and whereabouts of this species secret." But if Yoda is from Dagobah, doesn't that make him a Dago? Whoops, you just offended Italians.
 * Except Yoda isn't from Dagobah; nobody knows where he's from originally. Word of God states that when he landed on Dagobah in Revenge of the Sith (shown in a deleted scene) it was the first time he had been there.

Yoda is the illegitimate child of Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy
Lucas made this claim, although he wants us to believe he was only joking. The truth is that this is a Sarcastic Confession
 * And Mark Hamill is Luke's cousin.

Humans in the Star Wars galaxy are our ancestors, in a sense.
Centuries(at least) from Return of the Jedi,a colony of humans will have mastered extragalactic travel. They travel billions of light years to our solar system,but end up crashing on an early Earth.Inside the ship is a bio-computer containing the history of their evolution,and some protoplasm.This starts the process of human evolution all over again,and the bio-computer ensures we come out on top.Thus,life appears and evolves to be like the Earth we know today.Magicians,sorcerors and others?They're using the Force

They're our ancestors and descendants.
After we make Earth unlivable, we go colonize another galaxy. Way after Return of the Jedi, humans abandon the galaxy, go millenia back in time, and start human civilization on Earth. It's a Stable Time Loop.

There is an All The Tropes in the GFFA.
This explains why in Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor, Luke is saying "I've seen this all the time." at every single holodrama about him. Also explains why Lando refers to "some Big Bad" in Allies.

The Jedi and the Sith are responsible for the absence of handrails from the Star Wars universe.
Through various means, they have ensured that there are plenty of unprotected ledges to hurl people off of.
 * Similarly, they suppressed the cortosis weave technology, ensuring the dominance of lightsabers.

Coruscant is Earth
Sort of mentioned above: Over time, Earth got to be so built up, it eventually turned into one big planet-wide city. During this same time, the human race was going through an expansionist phase, colonizing new planets left and right. Also during this time, the name of Earth slowly changed(this is Truth in Television; London used to be called Londinium, India was called Hindustan, and even old New York was once New Amsterdam) until, by the time of the Galactic Republic, it was now called "Coruscant".
 * And somehow moved from the edge of the galaxy to the center?
 * They used Centerpoint to pull it there.

Earth is left alone because everyone's scared of us
We have a high rate of low-ability Force-users, who are written off as 'psychics'; we have nukes; we have psychotherapy. Suddenly Earth looks a LOT scarier, especially when you factor in that some of those Force-users will see the child-soldier Jedi and start thinking nuclear weapons are a good idea.
 * Nukes would look about as threatening as bows-and-arrows to the rest of the galaxy, considering that they have things like Death Stars and Sun Crushers. And why would they be afraid of psychotherapy? (Oh no, the Earthlings are going to help us quit smoking! Run for the hills!)
 * Hey, don't knock bows-and-arrows. Those Ewoks helped prove to be the downfall of the Empire.
 * Besides, why would they go to Earth? It's in a galaxy far, far away and extra-galactic travel is inconvenient at best. And why would they go there? When the Star Wars galaxy would be having its adventures and came to Earth, they'd either have to deal with real bows-and-arrows, or Atlantis.

george lucas died shortly after episode 6 was released
due to the series being so popular, and realizing how much money they could milk out of it, the other people who worked on the project quickly and quietly replaced him with a clone. one who had no knolwedge of where lucas wanted the series to go. therefore,the prequels, the george lucas love story, everything, can be put in perspective. it all makes sense now, dosen't it?

Lucas was high on andris, death sticks, and ryll when he wrote the Holiday Special
I mean, what the kriff? Nothing could make it tolerable.
 * Lucas literally gave 0 input on that turkey. What we have here is 100% grade A Executive Meddling in TV special form.

Edits for the "definitive edition" of the original trilogy

 * Forgive me if this list is a bit cynical, but it could be fun (realistically and non-sarcastically) thinking of what edits will be made to the final edition of Star Wars that George Lucas will push as the "definitive" edition and the one that should be remembered above all others as his finally-complete Magnum Opus:
 * "Duel of the Fates" and "Battle of the Heroes" will play during the Luke vs. Vader duels (probably in ESB and ROTJ, respectively). This would actually be quite cool for a lot of people, but the Fan Dumb would complain about it incessantly and declare it the new Han Shot First.
 * If Hayden Christensen is old enough at the time, Sebastian Shaw as the unmasked Vader will be rotoscoped out and replaced with Christensen in prosthetic makeup, reciting Shaw's lines. (This would definitely be the new Han Shot First.)
 * Alec Guinness' ghost will be replaced with Ewan McGregor. Lucas will make some excuse like "that was when he was most powerful in the Force". Padmé, Windu and other prequel characters might be added to ROTJ as ghosts as well.
 * Expanding on the above two statements: there will be no "final cut" of Star Wars until all the prequel actors who played characters originally from the original trilogy (Ewan McGregor, Hayden Christensen, whoever played Tarkin in Revenge of the Sith, etc.) are old enough to play the older incarnations of their characters. Then Lucas will completely replace Alec Guinness, Sebastian Shaw, Peter Cushing and others with the prequel actors (using redubbing, Uncanny Valley CGI face replacement and similar techniques) in order to tie both trilogies together better. I'm sure he's having fantasies about it right now.
 * Han won't shoot at all! He'll just beg Greedo for mercy until - nah, just kidding. Greedo will shoot exactly 1 frame (more or less) before Han, so that fans can interpret it either way but so that it's ultimately (and canonically) Lucas' preferred scenario of Greedo shooting first.
 * This is actually all based on a misunderstanding. Lucas has said that he never wanted Greedo to shoot first, he merely included that to preserve the PG-rating.
 * Possibly (and hopefully so), but George Lucas recently said otherwise. Twice. He's pretty infamous for constantly changing his mind. Another possibility: instead of barely shooting just before Greedo, Han will ostentatiously shoot several seconds after Greedo just to drive Lucas' point home and show that he's always right.
 * The puppet Yoda will be replaced with a CGI Yoda (one that resembles the puppet more than the prequel Yoda) in all shots.
 * Lightsabers will constantly flip back and forth between being their correct colors and being odd color-time-error-caused colors such as hot pink for Darth Vader.
 * It'll be in 3D, and unable to be viewed in 2D.
 * If any additional scenes of Boba Fett are added, it'll be Temuera Morrison wearing the suit, especially if he takes his helmet off.
 * Various Clone Wars characters will make cameos if they're still alive, and possibly Sam Witwer as a Starkiller (clone) non-speaking cameo as well.
 * Dee Bradley Baker will voice all the stormtroopers, and a few of them might be retconned (possibly have rotoscoped markings on their armor) into clone commanders from the Clone Wars series such as Rex and Cody. Can you say "These aren't the droids you're looking for" in a crappy Australian accent?
 * And afterwards, Lucas will then make prequel-style full remakes of the original trilogy and declare those to be the canon versions.

George Lucas has been replaced by a Founder, and the new Star Wars trilogy as well as (especially) Star Wars: The Clone Wars are Pro-Dominion propaganda.
Think of it, the Republic does have some similarities to the Dominion from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Both the Republic and the Dominion are "led" (more or less) by an inner circle of "Overbeings" claiming to have supernatural powers (Jedi / Founders) and consist of many different subordinated species, and both have an army of completely loyal genetically engineered soldiers (Clone Troopers / Jem'hadar). One of the separatist enemies of the Republic is even called the Trade Federation.

The Star Wars: Clone Wars cartoons are in-universe pro-Jedi propaganda, produced shortly after the fall of the Republic.
Most of the events depicted in the cartoons did actually occur, but details were changed to depict the Jedi in a better light. The abilities of the Jedi were also greatly exaggerated: Remember that one battle where Mace Windu single-handedly decimates an entire army of battle droids after losing his lightsaber? If Mace could really do that, why did he and his Jedi have to be rescued by the clone troopers in Attack of the Clones?
 * The boy who stood on the hill watching the above-mentioned battle (then offered Mace a drink of water afterwards) played a large role in the creation of the propaganda films.
 * That part was actually canonized in a sourcebook-type article on the official website (ref), with the exception that it doesn't explicitly say that the version we see is the boy's version.
 * The fact that the boy created a cartoon based on the Battle of Dantooine is canon. However, according to Leland Chee, the Clone Wars cartoon as we know it as factual, and everything in it happened as depicted.

The Star Wars movies were propaganda. The Empire is the good guy.
Think about it. Padme waltz into the senate and accuses the Trade Federation of invading her little planet, but offers no proof. We are supposed to some how see this as the corrupt and ineffective Senate when its just good political practice. In RotJ which side ignores the primitive Ewoks and which uses false gods to rally them into a jihad?
 * Well, there is that whole "reducing an entire planet to dust" thing, but yes, the Rebels aren't exactly squeaky clean heroes.
 * The tragic Alderaan Attack was the action of a Rebel terrorist group, who spun the attack into a conpiracy theory by the Empire using a supposed "superweapon" that, conveniently, cannot be found. They also painted the Endor Space Puppy Breeding Station as a new "Death Star". You believe this crap?
 * The Empire aren't Good Guys. They're evil, genocidal maniacs that construct superweapons willy nilly. It wasn't until Gilad Pellaeon ruled the Empire that they finally went to Grey then Neutral Good.
 * Also, several holes in the theory; one.) C-3PO only used the god thing to persuade the ewoks not to kill his friends. He even told the truth after he secured their release. two.) The Death Star wasn't found because it was blown up; three, we see the superlaser on the death star II in action; four; palps tortures luke in a needlessly violent way and cackles while doing so, showing that he's a sadist; five; She tried to offer proof, but the Trade Federation deliberately blocked the motion; Also, Palps orchestrated one of the most devastating galactic wars in history just so that he could become emporer, showing that he didn't care about human life as long as he got power. Finally, According to all the important officials in Lucasfilm, the films are incontrovertable truth, and cannot be dismissed as propaganda; all else holds lesser status to the movies.
 * Serious. Effin. Business.
 * One: you can't believe anything the movies show - they're fictionalized propaganda. Two: Of course the important officials in Lucasfilm say the films are incontrovertable truth. They're the propagandists who made the films. That's like saying 'Goebbels must be telling the truth - Goebbels says he is.'

George Lucas and all the writers of the EU stories are Rebel propagandists.
In truth,the two are a Grey and Grey Morality.Both sides have good intentions.Both Jedi and Sith are far more ambiguos.The Rebels hired influential storywriters to demonize the Empire,and since they won,over the centuries what really happened has been utterly blurred.The reason why they're still around is due to time travel,being a Time Lord and the fact George Lucas is a powerful Force-user.

Luke Skywalker and the Jedi's Revenge is exactly how the Galactic Civil War happened, and the movies are Rebel propaganda.
Just because.

The Clone Wars subplot is anti-imperialist social commentary
This one needs some background explanation.
 * American politics, probably world politics, is conventionally viewed as a never-ending tug-of-war between government and business. As author Bertram Gross put it in 1980, coincidentally, the same year The Empire Strikes Back came out. From the right, we are warned against the danger of state capitalism or state socialism, in which Big Business is dominated by Big Government. From the left, we hear that the future danger (or present reality) is monopoly capitalism, with finance capitalists dominating the state. However, Gross and other radical anti-imperialists argue, the truth is that in the United States and in the world at large, governmental and business forces work together to further their own interests at the expense of everyone else. According to Gross, Big Business and Big Government have been learning how to live in bed together, and despite arguments between them, enjoy the cohabitation. Who may be on top at any particular moment is a minor matter and in any case can be determined only by those with privileged access to a well-positioned keyhole. In his book, Friendly Fascism, Gross contends that the apparent battle between governmental and business interests primarily serves as a smokescreen for the fact that they are, in fact, in collusion to oppress the rest of humanity.
 * Now we turn to the prequels and what do we see? On one side, the Republic, led by Chancellor Palpatine, who, in Attack of the Clones and even moreso in the Expanded Universe is shown to gather greater and greater executive power to himself, all in the name of reuniting the Republic, or course. Big Government? Check. On the other hand, you have the Separatists, led by Count Dooku. The Separatist movement's main backers? The Trade Federation, the Commerce Guild, the Corporate Alliance, the Techno Union, and the Intergalactic Banking Clan, among others. Hell, the whole invasion was because the Trade Federation balked at a taxation of free trade zones in the Outer Rim Territories. General Grievousâ€™s flagship, the Invisible Hand, presumably comes from that favorite free-market idea: â€œThe invisible hand of the market.â€� Big Business? Check. The kicker? The Separatists are secretly led by the Sith Lord Darth Sidious who is in reality, none other than Chancellor Palpatine of the Republic. So what this means is that while the clone wars are apparently an epic struggle between Big Government and Big Business they're actually about both sides accumulating power to Palpatine/Sidious, who, in Revenge of the Sith uses that accumulated power to declared himself Emperor, and convert the Republic into The Empire. So, secretly working together to oppress the people? Check. Spooky, ain't it?
 * The whole pattern is Older Than You Think. Since Star Wars is explicitly based on both The Roman Empire and Isaac Asimov's Roman Empire in SPACE, how can avoid being a comment on imperialism and the imperializing of a Republic? Why limit it to the present-day U.S., when it's a recurring theme throughout human history?

The expanded universe consists of in-universe documents from about fifty years after the Legacy era
As noted on the Grand Unified Timeline, the Legacy Era in the GFFA lines up with the 1950s in this one. Thus, the EU is actually a series of historical documents and historical fiction written in the present day of the GFFA, discussing events that took place close to two hundred years earlier; the movies themselves are, however, not in-universe documents, which is why they are so much higher on the canon scale. The discrepancies and retcons of the EU are actual in-universe factual errors or poetic liscence by the researchers and writers, much like you'd find in stuff written today about the Civil War era.
 * Karen Traviss is a Mandalorian or writing for a primarily Mandalorian audience, so her documents are written from a Mandalorian-ethnocentric perspective
 * The Jacen Solo administration has been subject to centuries of smear campaigns and caricature, and he wasn't actually that nutty or Slippery Slope diving in "actual" history, sorta like Nixon in reality- bad, but comically exaggerated in popular culture
 * Vergere is an extremely controversial figure, with different authors thinking her very wise or insidious, and so different documents present her very differently
 * Daala is also a very controversial figure, with various authoritative authors exalting and lambasting her as either utterly incompetent or one of the most skilled persons ever, and most portrayals as a result end up with elements of ridicule and praise, resulting in appearances of Informed Ability
 * This might also be a case of pandering to an in-universe Memetic Badass while sticking with less-impressive historical facts
 * Also alternatively, she really piled it on high with the propoganda during her time as chief of state, resulting in a lasting positive public opinion of her that bleeds into the historical accounts- and is spoofed by some who disagre
 * So much emphasis is placed on not using racial slurs towards the Yuuzhan Vong of the NJO series because of "present-day" Yuuzhan Vong antidefamation groups making such slurs very not PC

The Original Trilogy is an elaborate allegory for the Second World War.
Obviously, the Empire are the Nazis (or perhaps a combination of the Nazis and Japanese Empire) and the Rebels are the Allies. All of the filming locations represent actual locations on Earth; ie. Tatooine is North Africa, Hoth is Scandinavia, Endor is a forest in northern Europe (or possibly a jungle in Southeast Asia) and of course, Space Is an Ocean. This runs into problems, however, over the inclusion of the Soviet Union and the way the actual war ended. On the other hand, it allows Executor to be the Bismarck and the Death Star to be the rocket experiments at Peenemünde. The prequel trilogy is the leadup to the war: Palpatine is the charismatic politician who militarizes the state against the wishes of others, engineers a crisis (the Reichstag fire/the Clone Wars) to gain popular support, and turns the republic into a dictatorship.

Luke is slowing descending into hallucinatory madness, like his father before him.
This ignores the prequels and disregards the sequels.
 * Luke is a pretty useful member of the rebel alliance in A New Hope, although a little prone to believing everything an old man tells him, no matter how crazy it sounds. The more Luke learns about the force, the less useful he seems to become. In A New Hope, he saves them all.
 * After all the build up in Episode 5, a showdown between Luke and Vader was inevitable, and the only way it would come out without being forced was if Luke went out on his own. Plus, Luke was the epitome of usefullness during the Sail Barge scene. If he hadn't been their, or if he hadn't used the force, they would have all died, so yeah, he was still useful.
 * If the Force really works, why would people who knew Vader dismiss it as an "old religion"? If he's choking people from a distance, at least those in the inner circle would know it was real. This suggests the "choking" scenes are just wishful thinking on Vader's part.
 * "Welcome to Imperial Officer Training 101, first lesson: Lord Vader thinks he can choke us all by waving his hand. If he ever finds out he can't, he'll just stab us with his lightsaber. Just act it up, fall over, and then we're ready to introduce "New Recruit: John Smith".
 * I vaguely remember reading a book years ago, where it was mentioned people thought the choking came from some of the technology built into him, not from the force.
 * Yes! I know what you're talking about! Someone else even built a glove with sonic disruptors to mimic Vader and make everyone think he had force powers.
 * You're thinking of The Glove of Darth Vader, one of the Young Adult books of the Jedi Prince series. While the glove itself was augmented to enhance the wearer's strength, the Force Choke was all Vader. Trioculus had it installed with a device to simulate the Force Choke in order to maintain the illusion that he was Palpatine's son and heir to the throne. And that's about the most believable part of the series. The rest are painful to read, even at the appropriate age, and left completely out of continuity for a very good reason.
 * The sonic disruptor didn't mimic the force choke, it caused intense pain and tissue damage exactly the way you would expect a sonic cannon to have cause, though it was meant to be his version of a force choke. It was the lightning emitters that maintained the illusion that he was Palpatine's son.
 * Nobody else sees Yoda, and R2 seems really quite concerned throughout the Dagoba sequence -- which lasts for weeks by the look of it, and yet very little time has passed for everyone else.
 * Not quite. The Falcon's hyperdrive is knocked out at that time, meaning that they have to drag their butts to Bespin at sublight speed. Given the distances between stars in your typical galaxy, it could've easily taken several years.
 * Luke is confirmed to hallucinate at least somewhat while on Degoba - remember the duel with the Darth Vader who had Luke's face? It would also explain how Luke managed to find Yoda when he could have been anywhere on an entire planet.
 * Thus, the Force is a fiction, which lives primarily in the madness of the Skywalker family.
 * I'm sorry, but Luke made the shot into the Death Star's exhaust port, which everyone else, who were in bombers with targeting computers failed to do. It's always been real. What about when Palpatine toasted Luke, or the explosion that occured when he hit the reactor. There is no way an old man could have realeased that much energy unless he had dark energy.
 * Re the exhaust port-- Two Words: sheer luck. The rest were hallucinations.
 * Or it wasn't even Luke that made the shot. That would explain why the medal scene was completely without dialogue - it was a hallucination/dream sequence.
 * Also, the Jedi mind trick is obviously the force, as is Obi wan sneaking around the Death Star to everyone except Vader, as well as his body vanishing into thin air when Vader cut him down. Plus if the force was fake it would undo one of the key aspects of the story (not to mention make it a lot more dull.)
 * Note that the Jedi Mind Trick fails in Episode VI. In Episode IV, the droids don't seem to notice the stormtroopers much so it could have been a hallucination by Luke that Obi-Wan went along with to further his "Force" ideas. Also, Obi-Wan is a Retired Badass, which could explain the sneaking around the Death Star as simple stealth skills combined with a stealth field generator (they exist in the Star Wars universe according to KOTOR). He deactivated it to face Vader honorably. As per his vanishing when Vader cuts him down, perhaps there was a sudden power surge in Vader's lightsaber while he was cutting him that caused him to evaporate? After all, Vader is mentally unstable in this WMG and might have misaligned a wire in his lightsaber or some such thing.
 * Obi-Won and Yoda both evaporate... according to Luke's point of view. Whenever we see other Jedi die outside of Luke's POV, that doesn't happen.
 * First of all, the force trick only effects the weak minded. Jabba the Hutt ain't weak minded. Bib Fortuna on the other hand, was effected. And they technically do notice stormtroopers, they just stay out of the way. As for Obi Wan; there are scenes when Obi Wan walks RIGHT IN FRONT of the Storm Troopers and they don't notice. The situations he's in are only doable with the force. In addition, stealth field generators don't work at close range according to the game, and obi wan was at close range. We had no idea that Obi Wan intended to die. What's more, your scenario brings in a lot of other extra factors that violates occam's razor. And A New Hope was made 26 years before Kotor. for all intents and purposes stealth generators don't exist as far as we know. There's also a scene where Vader looks up after Obi Wan uses it. And vader just HAPPENS to know that Obi Wan is on the Millenium Falcon. Again, fanon is fine, but rewritting the whole frigging saga is just stupid.
 * The Jedi Mind Trick is only targets reacting to intimidation, just like the Force Choke. The people that do respond are all mooks who have more to lose by confronting the Jedi than by playing along. The Storm Troopers figured arguing with a crazy old guy with a laser sword about droids was above their pay grade - same with Bib Fortuna or the death stick dealer. If someone doesn't play along, the Jedi rationalizes that they're "strong-minded".

Alternately, The Force has a negative effect on the human mind's stability.
Look at the series; all of the superbly evil Sith or Jedi that were humans were doing what they were doing for some kind of materialistic reason like for money or power. However, all of the evil human force users seemed to have snapped and done it for petty reasons. The prime example is Anakin, who breaks and chokes his own wife for no reason and has gone on a killing rampage simply because he was told to. My conclusion, the Force can break a human and make them easily suggestible and or crazy.
 * A modified version is suggested within the Expanded Universe by Mara Jade in Zahn's Hand Of Thrawn series, and implied to be correct. The Force itself provides guidance to all but the least sensitive. However, use of the more impressive or powerful Force techniques deafens the user and those around him or her to the Force's guidance, explaining both the in-universe Evil Idiot Ball and the tendency for power fluctuations.
 * Exposure to the Force makes someone easily suggestible and/or crazy? I see a distinct parallel with Warhammer 40000's Warp. Maybe Star Wars is a story about how the Imperium of Man fell to its current state? After all, there is the way that there doesn't seem to be any "new" technology in Star Wars, which could easily escalate to the New Technology Is Evil behavior of the Adeptus Mechanicus.
 * That WMG actually strikes this troper as close to being canon. Using the Force seems to be akin to riding the outer edge of a giant whirlpool, and it explains why there's really no such thing as a "gray Jedi": either you live an extremely strict and disciplined life to constantly balance the pull towards the Dark Side, or you slip up and get sucked right into the heart of it before you know what's happened. The Jedi are so strict about emotions because they know that using the Force means you always have one foot on the slope towards With Great Power Comes Great Insanity.
 * "The force is strong in him," not "He is strong in the force."
 * One problem. The Light Side is used for healing, the Dark Side is used for combat. Dark Side defininately fucks up the users mind, as it makes them agressive, but there is no proof the light side does that. In fact, the very act of using the light side requires complete stability, focus and harmony, and serenity, which is not something an insane person has.
 * I believe you've hit the nail on the head there sir. Unless, of course, the jedi are aware of the madness induced by force use. In that case one could argue that their training, and especially their focus on the traits you mentioned, are a method of harm reduction. In fact you could argue that the Jedi council was originally created as a kind of Xavier's mansion, teaching young people to control the powers they were born with.
 * While training is needed to control it, I doubt it causes madness (because there is no proof, and it pisses on one of the key plot points). Inability to cope with it might cause madness, but not the force itself.
 * It would explain why the Jedi recruited potential Force users as young children, and with the blessing of a democratic government. It's a preventative measure.
 * This is why the Jedi were confident that the Sith were the inbalance in the force: not because they are evil(though that does help), but because they use it without restraint.

Sith Lords regualarly rape/sexually abuse their Padawans
Because 1. They're sadists 2. To show them who's boss 3. Because by the time they are that deep in dark side, this is the only relationship they could ever have. To quote Darth Bane "one to desire power and the other to have it" Think about the Freudian implications there.
 * Alternatively, they don't need to have sex. The Dark Side is powered by passions, including their lust. Meaning Palpy got a sexual thrill off electrocuting Luke.

Luke is 'still' on Tantooine, hallucinating after seeing his parent's corpses.
The poor guy sees the two people who raised him as crispy fried corpses and is 'still' kneeling in the sand, having a highly complicated revenge fantasy against the Empire. Artificial hand? A bug bit it. His love interest turning out to be his sister? Not all hallucinations make sense. Would explain why so much of Tantooine, a stupid backwater planet, affects the course of galactic history. His old friend shows up at the Rebellion. The Death Star trench run resembles some old flying he used to do. Flying around having adventures with the two droids his family bought. Solo and Chewbacca? Some guys he saw at Toshi Station. And of course, Episode 6, where they go -back- to Tantooine. He must have run out of fantasy material for his hallucinations. Taking this one step further, there's no civil war going on, and there isn't even a Galactic Empire. This is all just in the imagination of a bored farm boy from Tatooine (living with his aunt and uncle after his parents were killed in a tragic landspeeder accident), who may have a future as a promising sci-fi author...or movie director.
 * Not to mention Obi Wan's voice continuously echoing throughout his head - it's Obi Wan trying to snap Luke out of it.
 * Again, undos the whole story, and makes it less interesting. Plus, the Tantive 4 sequence happened before they got roasted. So the princess plot would happen. Why is there an obssessive need to mess with the core saga aspects?

Anakin was suffering from Dementia Pugilistica.
During his career as a Jedi in between the first & second films, Anni took several blows to the head which damaged his brain. This would explain his unusual, stilted speech patterns & violent outbursts. Compare the sad, sad tale of real-life pro-wrestler Chris Benoit.
 * The funny thing is, that's actually the canonical explanation for why Admiral Daala is so stupid. The jury's still out on Anakin, though.

Padme has some kind of autism spectrum disorder.
Seriously, how else could she not notice how deep into the Uncanny Valley Anakin is? It seems like everybody else is unnerved by Anakin's presence & only tolerates it because of its abilities, but Padme is actually messed up enough to feel something akin to love for it. Come to think of it, a lot of her interactions with other characters seem a little off, as well. There was definitely something wrong with that girl.
 * The girl spent her entire teen years in government. She probably doesn't really know how to properly socialize.
 * Much the same thing could be said about Anakin- the Jedi aren't renowned for social graces either.
 * See 'Padme's love for Anakin was the Jedi Mind Trick', also on this page.
 * Hell, if anyone's a Rain Man, it's Lucas. Obsessed with a bunch of old crap from his childhood that hardly anybody else cared about anymore, incapable of understanding how real people think & feel, no sense of the Uncanny Valley. Obvious, really.
 * Can I just say that this WMG heavily misuses the concept of Uncanny Valley? Uncanny Valley is about things that look like human beings but aren't, not about psychological disorders suffered by actual humans.

The Romantic Plot Tumor in the prequel was deliberate
They're all just puppets dancing to Palpatine's strings, and the stilted, almost Uncanny Valley nature of their relationship is a sign of that artficiality.
 * And as I've noted in Fridge Brilliance, neither Anakin nor Padme have had to opportunity to develop into normal people, with Anakin beginning to train as a Jedi, essentially entering a monastic order, at age nine, and Padme being thrust into the world of politics as a teenager, possibly younger. --Premonition 45
 * Exactly. They wouldn't know love if it smacked them in the face. They felt physical attraction to each other, and all it took was a gentle push from Palpatine to make them think it was something deeper.

Padme's love of Anakin was no more than a Jedi Mind Trick.
In Attack of the Clones, just as Anakin & Padme part ways with Obi-Wan, she says something along the lines of "I'm scared all of a sudden." Anakin then admits he's scared too. That was the first instance of him subconsciously using the Force to manipulate her emotions. After her initial rebuff of his advances, he begins to influence her mind directly. This would explain why Padme didn't flee in terror after he admitted to slaughtering an entire village of Sand People. She was pretty much under the influence of a Force Roofie by that point.
 * Near the end of Episode III, his mental enslavement of her was finally broken by Obi-Wan when he met her at her apartment on Naboo. His presence on Mustafar kept Anakin from re-establishing his spell over her, so he Force-choked her out of frustration.
 * Sure, we know that the Jedi Mind Trick only works on the weak minded, but the person who assures Padme that she is too strong-minded to fall for it is Anakin himself, who is hardly objective and might well simply be flattering her.
 * Or lying so she won't guess.
 * Another similar theory is that Anakin did to Padme what Joruus C'Boath did to General Covell, withdrawing his influence from her when he thought she betrayed him was enough to make her brain "simply shut down" and lose the will to live.
 * The worst part is Anakin doesn't even realize he's doing it. He's so obsessed with her as a lover and as a surrogate mother figure that he subconsciously uses his massive Force powers to manipulate her in an effort to keep her with him, to avoid losing her the way he lost his mother.

Obi-Wan Kenobi had Alzheimer's Disease.
Obi-Wan didn't intentionally deceive Luke about anything, it was from the "Certain Point Of View" of someone with Alzheimer's.
 * Obi-Wan didn't remember owning any droids.
 * That's because he didn't own them. They both belonged to Anakin. POV strikes again...
 * So what about that red R4 unit that got its head sawed off at the beginning of ROTS?
 * The droid and the ship were the property of the Jedi collectively?
 * Individual Jedi, according to the ROTS novel, are specifically banned from owning anything besides their clothes and sabers. Of course Obi-Wan didn't remember owning any droids, Obi-Wan basically owned throughout his entire career a lightsaber, a few sets of Jedi robes, a breath mask, and a rock.
 * And he had to share the rock!

The Star Wars Holiday Special was a hallucination that took place in Luke's radiation-fried brain after the destruction of the first death star.
He spends the next few yearts trying to convince himself that it wasn't real, and eventually turns to the dark side because anyone who could dream that up must be a darksider.
 * So that is why George Lucas refuses to acknowledge its existence.

Assassination is just a cover job for the Emperor's Hands.
Think about what we know about Palpatine: He's obsessed with superweapons, and he did away with the only people who would oppose genocide, because the only way to defeat the Yuuzhan Vong was to destroy them entirely. In addition, Palpatine knows about the Yuuzhan Vong because of his connections to Thrawn. We also know that Luke carries Anakin's name and lived with Anakin's family on Anakin's home planet. He's not hidden very well. Palpatine let him survive because Palpatine knew only Vader's grandchildren could defeat the Yuuzhan Vong. We also know that Force-sensitive clones are mentally unstable. What does this have to do with the Emperor's Hands? The name "Emperor's Hand" comes from an ancient method of extracting DNA before cloning technology was perfected. Palpatine, knowing only of Luke (and besides, Luke can have many more children than Leia can just by virtue of being male), abducted recruited young girls and trained them as assassins, but the assassin job was just a cover for their real purpose: To be the mother of Luke Skywalker's children. The male Hands only exist for the sole purpose of perpetuating this faÃ§ade. This is why Palpatine was thinking Kriff you, Skywalker! at the end. It was the last command.
 * Mara actually has a nightmare in Union #3 that goes something along the lines of this WMG; well, the last part anyway.

Vader didn't become a cyborg all at once
The end of episode Three felt kinda forced, to try and match up Anakin Skywalker and cyborg Darth Vader. But Vader had twenty years of pitiless combat to be honed into a killing machine, losing more and more of himself to battle.
 * I'm not sure how to resolve his duel with and defeat by Obi-Wan, though.
 * It also does seem odd that Obi-Wan would leave him to burn, both for reasons of mercy and practicality.
 * It's actually implied by Mara Jade that Palpatine used to carnally punish Vader as well. Not to mention he impaling himself on a lightsaber in the duel with Maul in Resurrection.

The Rebel Alliance are a small band of religious terrorists
The films are just propaganda films released after terrorist attacks. The Empire is shown to basically be secular with little regard for the Dark Side of the Force. The top generals openly mock Darth Vader. Vader's role in the Empire is greatly inflated in the films in order to suggest that the Empire are religious crusaders as well. Luke and Obi-Wan represent religious fanatics who hijack an originally purely political rebel movement. The destruction of the two Death Stars are just tactical victories, but presented in the films as decisive final wins. Palpatine is just a Machiavellian politician with no interest in the force. Han Solo was an important rebel leader from the beginning, but he is portrayed as a mercenary because non-Jedi rebels are played down, but his historic role was too large to ignore.
 * Word of god confirms that the films are completely accurate. As for the top general mocking vader; only one does it, and after Vader uses the throat choke the general doesn't dare insult him again. Also, Vader is seen throttling officers with impunity to the point where they practically wet their pants at the prospect of failing him. As for Vader's role being inflated; he's the second in command of the emporer. He's the second most powerful man in the whole empire. The role he has in the films is not at all inflated. 3.) Luke and Obi Wan were not the leaders, nor is their any evidence that they had an effect on rebel policy. It was always a political movement. At best, Luke was a soldier who took orders and who happened to be a jedi. 4.) The destruction of the second death star was definately a final win, seeing as the two leaders died, and the sith chain of succession was "if we die then as far as we care the galaxy can go fuck itself." meaning all the leaders essentially started to fight each other and tear each other to pieces. The first death star: well you've just won your first major victory against impossible odds. I'd be happy too 5.) Why do people try to downplay palpatine? We all know he's a sith, he's shown his dark abilities in action many many times. He is a sith. I'm for fanon, but pissing on the core aspects of the saga without proof is just silly. 6.) Han is a smuggler. Same as before. Look, I respect fanon, but it should not completely disregard the core elements without proof. There is a difference between fanon and trying to rewrite the whole saga for shits and giggles.

Building of Death Star II began before A New Hope
It would explain a lot of people's gripes as to how a much larger Death Star than Death Star I could be built in the mere few years after the Battle of Yavin, particularly since Death Star I was more than 40 years in the making. It is possible that the Empire was in the process of employing a long-term plan to build a whole fleet of them.
 * It is also possible that the Death Star seen at the end of Revenge of the Sith is actually Death Star II, the construction of which was always plagued with problems, inasmuch even after 40 years the outer structure is still not complete (though the weapons are operational). Later, the much smaller "Death Star I" was built from scratch, to greater success.
 * Word of God also says that the first Death Star took eighteen years to build, while the second, much larger Death Star only took four. It's still Word of God, but obviously Star Wars is ruled by a crazy God.
 * Apparently the first Death Star was plagued by non-stop slave insurgencies and sabotage. Plus, it was the first, so they haven't built anything like that before, and the DSII was also largely unfinished. Comparing to other instances of Word of God, this one is hardly silly.
 * The first Death Star was built when the Empire was just consolidating its power and the galaxy had just suffered a brutal civil war. The second was built at the height of its power. Also, there are quite a few discrepancies over the size of Death Star II; some sources give its diameter as 900 km, some as 160 km, etc.
 * In one of the myriad Expanded Universe tales of the Mos Eisley Cantina, a pair of characters (who were looking to hire Han Solo until Kenobi and Skywalker bought his services) hijack an imperial transport ship that is revealed to be carrying a component of the second Death Star's superlaser, revealing that it was indeed under construction by the time the first Death Star was completed.

The Jedi Holocaust was not effective
Think about it. How many Jedi in the EU survived Darth Vader's assault? In addition, There Is Another...
 * Number of Jedi before Order 66: over 10,000. Number of Jedi after Order 66: less than 100. A 99+% successful operation isn't half bad.
 * The success of an operation depends on its objective. If the objective is to eradicate 100% of the Jedi (and they must be "all destroyed"), then 99% is still a fail.
 * This wasn't the first time in the EU where the Jedi had been "wiped out." Just play Knights of the Old Republic II. However, this doesn't support or counter your WMG.
 * Let's see the survivors: Obi-Wan, Yoda, Rahm Kota, Paratus, Shaak Ti, Marris Brood, Kento Marek, Olee Starstone, and probably more that I haven't read about. While the Jedi were few in number, it still meant the downfall of the Empire. If I were the Emperor, I'd blame the Stormtroopers for their incompetence and failure.
 * Quinlan Vos too.
 * The survivors of the Jedi were their most powerful, experienced, and talented. Aren't those the people who logically should survive a massacre? As to Yoda's survival, Palpatine's got no one to blame but himself for that one: he fought the little green dude directly, and failed to land a solid enough hit.
 * Wait, Shaak Ti survived? In the Lego Star Wars game, Anakin cut off her head in the Jedi Temple.
 * Play The Force Unleashed. She gets officially killed in that game.
 * The scene in the Lego Star Wars game is based off of one of the two deaths that was planned for Shaak Ti in Revenge of the Sith, but both got cut from the film.

The Star Wars Movies are history files recorded and edited together by R2-D2.
R2 is one of the few characters that exists in every movie and a few sequences are of him and C-3PO alone. R2 could infact have realized that he bore witness to several major historical battles and was able to grant himself near unfettered access to all major networks, by virtue of being there or accessing a computer port and streaming all the data to himself. He then compiled it into long series for posterity, explaining why everything is recorded as "A long time ago..." He may have even been selected for a flight out of the galaxy and added the final part of the line so that extragalactic aliens could see the lessons to be learned from this important part of history.
 * Supported partially by Lucas, whose stated that R2 is telling the story of the movies to the keeper of the Journal of the Whills about 100 years after they took place.
 * And the movies are essentially valued history files to Nat, Kol and Cade...actually wait, that's a pretty awesome idea!

The Sith are Catholic
It would explain why there's so many big bad Sith lords, more than the traditional two; They're anti-Sith Lords
 * The Jedi are Presbyterian, of course. How else would you explain Anakin getting made by the Presbyterian Church?
 * Alternatively, the Sith are Presbyterian, and Anakin was subconsiously catching onto the idea that Darth Sidious created him.
 * I must be an insufficient student of Catholicism. I don't get it.
 * It's a joke about all the Popes and anti-Popes.
 * Pope Benedict XVI's resemblance to Palpatine Darth Sidious doesn't help either.

R2-D2 is an unreliable narrator.
Word of Lucas has it that R2-D2 is the teller of the Star Wars saga 104 years after the Battle of Yavin. Specifically, his tale is part of the "Journal of the Whills," a framing device from older versions of the Star Wars script, and the collector of Artoo's stories is the Shaman of the Whills, hence the "A long time ago" part. However, there is no reason to think that the little astromech droid is being entirely forthcoming. In fact, Artoo has a history of pranks and concealing the truth or history. He probably made up the saga to mess with the Whills for whatever reason, possible as part of a Xanatos Gambit. In any case, the saga would be based in part on history to make a more convincing story. Like all myths, however, Artoo's story contains many..."embellishments..." from a certain point of view, of course. The original Clone Wars cartoon was probably actual propaganda tapes that Artoo smuggled to effect verisimilitude. The actual story behind the events, however, is far different than the Star Wars we know.

The Galactic Empire that menaced the galaxy during the Galactic Civil War was an attempt by Palpatine to recreate the ancient Sith Empire.
They both seem to maintain the same policies on aliens as one another, not only that, but they use the same tactics and technology such as the Star Destroyer, and have the same types of troop policies.
 * Ah, but several of the historical Sith empires didn't care what your race was, what mattered was if you had merit, their was no "sorry mr. Mon Calamari, but even though you can beat Darth Human easily you can't be a Lord because your not human" provision.

most of Coruscant is a past social services project
When you have a lot of people without a job, people hold the government accountable. So governments in real life create jobs, which often have no real use. This problem is a million times bigger in the Star Wars universe, as the republic spans a million worlds. The republic solved this by employing them to expand Coruscant city, even though no planet could have an infrastructure capable of actually supporting a population large enough to fill all these buildings. The planet was never designed to be fully occupied, and only in certain parts are all the apartments taken(around the Senate building) and is there a dense population.

R2D2'S memory is slightly glitched
Since he is relaying the events over a hundred years later one can safely that the apparent timeline issues (characters like Obi-Wan and Owen seeming older then they should in IV in relation to the prequels) are due to r2's memory being glitched causing a sort of compression of the events in the prequels but the sectors containing the 'original' trilogy is unaffected.

Lightsabers work because they increased the speed of light betwen then and now.
The slower light carries much less heat energy, and can be just as powerful as our light if more photons are added. The police were able to use light batons on Futurama because the speed of light will be even slower in the year 3000 than it was a long time ago, in that galaxy far far away.
 * You Fail Physics Forever.
 * Time from posting to someone completely missing the point: 20 days.

Darth Vader keeps killing Imperial stormtroopers and soldiers because he thinks Palpatine will use them to kill him
Think about it. Order 66 was pre-programmed into the clones who became the stormtroopers. It's been suggested in the EU that Palpatine had other secret orders put into their minds. Vader is convinced that one such order translates as "Kill my apprentice if he ever turns on me" (which makes sense, really). That's not even bringing in the Emperor's Hands and other secret servants Palpatine has that Vader knows exist, but doesn't know who exactly they are. Thus Vader views every single member of the military hierarchy as a threat, and given his fear for his life he routinely kills them when they mess up to make sure they know he's on to them.
 * Almost confirmed in Dark Times comic series. Vader thinks about Palpatine having clone troopers behind Skywalker's back to kill him. So, Vader asks clone commander Vill if Palpatine had indoctrinated the stormtroopers with a Contingency Order to kill him. Vill's hesitation to answer this question confirmed Vader's suspicions. He pushed the clone off a cliff, ensuring that his query would not reach the Emperor. Yesm Anakin had to live not only without his family in a horrible armour, but also with paranoia about being easily killed by his own stormtroopers, just like the Jedi generals were killed by theirs.
 * Maybe he let Luke blow up the Death Star. That took out a LOT of potential assassins.

The Rebels are not just Republic revisionists, but the remnants of CIS too.
The EU shows some separatist stuff (droids and especially ships) falling into the hands of the rebels, and some ex-separatist planets also joined the Alliance (which, aside from Alderaan, centered in Outer Rim), but that's not the main point. For a minute, forget about all EU and guides to the movies you have ever read and rewatch the movies. From I to VI, in in-universe chronological order. So, when Episode IV starts... Who are these guys and why are they fighting the Republic, whoops, I mean, The First Galactic Empire? Where did they come from? Er, looks like those separatists are good guys now, cause the Jedi are in league with them!
 * While the most of the Separatist army was probably destroyed, it's likely that the remaining separatists bankrolled the Rebellion.

The Empire would have lost against the Vong, but for entirely different reasons.
Forget Han's awesome Imperial superweapon speech. The Galactic Empire was a corrupt, Sith-backed totalitarian terror state that practiced widespread disfranchisement and brutality against the majority of its populace. By the time of the Vong invasion, the Galaxy would have endured 40 years of this. The Vong wouldn't be seen as extra-galactic invaders by most people, they'd have been seen as liberators. The Peace Brigade? That would have been a drop in a bucket compared to what The Empire would have to face, and much of it more legitimate than what the New Republic had to deal with. "Random nonhuman: What's this you say, Imperial scum? They come to enslave us and murder our children? Assuming this isn't more Imperial propaganda like how Alderaan was blown up by the Rebels, how's that any different than you?"

The prequels are self insert fan fiction written by R2-D2.
Take note of the following elements of the films:
 * The dialogue between the various non-droid characters is stilted, awkward, and at times almost robotic as if its written by someone who has trouble replicating natural human conversation.
 * The depiction of the Jedi's use of the force is positive, but still far more scientific and logical (acting as super powers) rather than a mystical phenomenon.
 * Artoo frequently appears as the most consistently intelligent and capable hero (barring possibly Obi-Wan) in the movies; getting an unlikely commendation in TPM, chosen as the companion for Padme and Anakin for no real reason in AOTC, and easily taking out battle droids in ROTS. Throughout the trilogy he seems to gain new powers as the plot demands (rockets, spitting oil), is witness to all the major events, and we never see him getting a hint of the casual discrimination droids supposedly do receive in the galaxy.
 * C-3PO is made to look foolish or irrelevant at so many points in the story; whether its his parts showing, getting his head switched with a battle droid's, and getting his memory erased. In every movie its clear that he's far less helpful than his astromech counterpart.

Hence the entirely prequel story is his rather distorted take on historical events with him assisting Anakin and Obi-Wan, even though Kenobi not only doesn't recognize him, but points out he never even owned a droid. The fact is, there were actual Clone Wars and the Emperor did rise to power, but chances are they hold little resemblance to what we saw. R2 and 3PO were actually off in their own minor adventures while all of this was occurring.
 * Technically, Jedi aren't supposed to own anything except their lightsabres and their clothes. Obi Wan never has owned a droid. All the droids he's ever used were on loan from the Order or the Republic.
 * Is that the case in pre-Phantom Menace canon however? Even if it is Kenobi at no point gives any strong impression that he seems familiar to him. Given Artoo's insistence on Obi-Wan being his former master, the little droid is either lying or a has very loose interpretation of the concept of ownership.
 * Or perhaps he was so insistant because he realised that Obi-Wan was the most likely person to oppose Anakin & Palpatine and help the Skywalkers, and he knew Luke was Anakin's son, so he was bringing Luke to him so Obi-Wan could train him. That Obi-Wan would be likely to help the Alliance was just a bonus. This also means that R2 was The Chessmaster.

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It diddn't happen that long ago.
It happened a long time ago, not a long, long time ago.
 * This is, believe it or not, demi-canon (from a non-canonical source, but not yet contradicted by canon). There was one alternate-timeline comic where Han crashlanded on Earth shortly after one of the original movies and the wreckage was found by Indiana Jones decades later; the chronometer on the Falcon and the time elapsed since the crash, combined with the date Indy found it, places the events of the original trilogy in the early 1800s, around 1817 or so.
 * You didn't wait for me to check the timeline. xD I was going to say that it happened about 60 years ago, in a galaxy far, far away. And then go on to mention that coincidentally, the Destiny should be arriving in a galaxy far, far away sometime soon...

Yodaspeak and Galactic Standard
We all know that Yoda speaks oddly, and that it's probably that Galactic Standard isn't his first language. This is untrue, sort of. The fact of the matter is that Yoda is nearly 900 years old by the time the films take place. 900 years ago from now is the early 12th century. If you listen to or read anything from the 12th century, it's going to be drastically different linguistically speaking from the modern form of the language. So, my theory is that Yoda's native language has evolved into modern Galactic Standard. Here's my proof: These two hints mean that Yoda's native language probably sounded similar to Anglo-Saxon. Or through the Translation Convention of Star Wars, was probably Anglo-Saxon. And over the last 900 years, what did Anglo-Saxon evolve into? It evolved into English.
 * Yoda's speech doesn't have a set word order. Rather than chalking this up to scriptwriter laziness, we can assume that this is actually how Yoda speaks. This suggests that in Yoda's native language, word order doesn't matter as much as cases and verb conjugations do. This means that the language is highly fusional.
 * Yoda's sound set is quite similar to modern English, but isn't quite.

Women are naturally immune to the Jedi Mind Trick

 * On no occasion in either the films or Star Wars: The Clone Wars is a female character mind tricked, or even the target of an unsuccesful mind trick. I know there are examples in the Expanded Universe but the evidence onscreen at leasts suggests the Force has no affect on female minds.

Has anyone thought that the force itself has been poisoned?
Has anyone thought that the force itself has been poisoned? You have jedi and sith that die and are accepted into the force then their consciousness gets all thrown together (no body to contain it anymore and keep it separate) so eventually with all of the jedi and the "sith" have such beliefs it started to create a dark side and a light side the jedi themselves tap into the force and from what we see the try and throw themselves into it completely with what a regular person wouldn't want it to affect their mind. so one the galaxy got large enough and jedis either started from a single planet or found out that they had common things with mystics of other planets (with the Force Users may have started as) the force could have eventually br noticed to an alarming degree and instead of just forming a society from your planet as the were meant to be ( the monsters and heroes of society) they become scared and join together for protection from the massively large no force users who even with the force have ways to control them (witch were their to make sure the force users didn't go out of control) and they see how much destruction they are doing being amongst the leaders of worlds all with their own agenda and no grand military powers so everyone's fighting wars as ='s so horrified and scared a main amount of force users band together the largest concentration of force users ever and they give themselves the name of jedi. the rules amongst the group would be fairly light and what with the majority of worlds losing their mystic soldiers and leaders (as tech way back then probably was to the level of we can shoot and transport ourselves and that's it) the people stopped fighting as much and eventually a non aggression agreement is formed that later becomes the Republic.

back to the force users called jedi who have decided to live in territory of the non aggression agreement are a group with a few rules essentially don't care what you do or think as long as it doesn't get us kicked out of our sanctuary. with them probably living on a force nexus the group gets stronger and deeper than any other group essentially their averages are stronger than your averages so eventually a certain stance on a political or moral group looks at all of the chaos these non force users (so not MY people) are doing to themselves and eventually form the thought of the dark side and seeing as their on a force nexus they spread when they break off those still in the first group later called jedi try and combat this betrayal and create a counter argument the light side. and thus the conflict was born.

midiclorians are just how you access the force