Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends/WMG

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Terrence has a nice side.

In "Fools and Regulations", Mac shows up with a bag, not a couple, a BAG, of video games from Terrence due to a deal Mac made with him about not telling their mother about the fire the elder brother started in the house. Mac then giggles while saying "Can you believe he did that? Hehe!", so that shows that they must have fun once in a while.

More evidence surfaces in "Eddie Monster". Terrence complimented Ed on more than one occasion, saying that he was "perfect", and in his own way, he called him brave. He also made Eduardo a costume and got a huge sack of potatoes for him; he even peeled them. Granted that was for his own advantage, but generous acts nonetheless.

In "Seeing Red", Terrence actually showed pride and mild affection for Red, the imaginary friend he created, and only started treating him badly when he messed his scheme up and completely disobeyed his orders, rather blatantly in fact.

Oh, and how can we forget the moment in "Berry Scary" when we caught the so-called jerkass was watching a lovey-dovey soap opera? With intense focus, I might add! He was even gripping a pillow. That's not something a 100% teenage jerk does, now is it?

Literally Everyone in the Fosters universe is "Mad" in the Wonderland sense

This is probably already addressed in the Fosters It Just Bugs me page but nearly all of the imaginary friends appear totally to be the opposite of anything any Real Life child would ever want. Instead of being cool, fun, and nice their Boreish, excessively nonsensical, totally anti-social and at times cruel. The only possible explanation for all of this is that nearly everyone that exists in the fosters universe is clinically insane but in the same way as characters in Alice in Wonderland are insane. as all of their thoughts and dreams appear to come true.

The only reason that no one is given genuine psychiatric treatment is that by their own logic a truly insane person imagines things, persons and events that dont really exist, but since everyones personal physical thoughts and dreams can be physically seen and interacted with/by others no one is declared mentally ill. It does explain why Madame Foster, Mac and numerous other human characters imagined their friends to act the way they do.

Mac will take over Foster's.

Remember in the first episode when Madame Foster said Mac had an imagination as pure as her own? She didn't give up on her imaginary friend, and Mac probably won't either. Madame won't live forever, and there will always be friends in need. She might even will the house to Mac.

  • The alternative would be Frankie, who is/was likely Madam Foster's heir. Though it's hard to say if Frankie actually wants to run Fosters or would even object to Mac getting the spot.

90% of the show was made up by World (as an alternative to Mac's theory)

World wasn't dumped at Foster's; he made up Foster's so that his "dream friend" (Frankie) would open the chest and have the events of Destination Imagination unfold. To add a little more drama, he made up "dream enemies" (Mac, Bloo, Wilt, Eduardo and Coco) so that he wouldn't get bored. He is technically the only sentient creature besides Frankie (remember, he controlled all of the Foster's Five's so-called allies while trying to get Frankie back).


90% of the show is made up by Mac

The Imaginary Friends were never as real as they seem to us. Mac just kept telling himself this to give himself a reason to keep his own Imaginary Friend. Mac doesn't seem to have a lot of human friends, and his family.... You get the idea. His imagination was pretty much all he ever had to keep him company. When his mother forced him to give up Bloo, he invented Foster's Home so he could keep playing with him.

In reality, Frankie, Madam Foster, Goo, and that one girl next door are the only other characters from the show who exist outside of Mac's imagination. Frankie is just a regular granddaughter who takes care of her old grandmother. The two women probably noticed how much Terrance bullied his little brother and tried to make Mac feel better by making friends with him. Mac then simply placed Foster's Home in the Foster's mansion and claimed to himself that he was going to visit Bloo every afternoon at 3 o'clock when he really was visiting Frankie and playing with her.

  • The image of Frankie as the "house-maid" and whole staff of Foster's stems from her being the only one around to care about her 80-year-old grandmother, which is not exactly a piece of cake.
  • Mac's "dream-world" hasn't been destroyed yet because Frankie and Madam Foster ENCOURAGE him to keep making up creative stories. The speech about "pure Imagination" that Madam Foster gives in the pilot was probably one of the few moments that Mac didn't make up.
  • Madam Foster is collecting stuffed dolls, and she allows Mac to play with them. He simply made up a character and some backstory for each of them. This makes sense with Wilt being the one to have stayed in Foster's the longest and being damaged: He's probably rather old. Eduardo is one of those Monster dolls with the inappropriate smiling faces. Coco was probably hand-sewn by some child and turned out downright weird. Maybe Madam Foster is also telling Mac stories involving the dolls from time to time, particularly Mr. Harriman. Just imagine the old Lady holding a stuffed bunny and saying, "And do you want to know what my Funny Bunny used to play with me, when I was a little girl?"
  • Goo is exactly what she is in the series: a hyperactive, creative little girl. She's probably playing along with Mac's "Foster's Home"-Games because making things up is her specialty as well. The She Is Not My Girlfriend moments stem from this: Mac is Not So Different from Goo. He just keeps denying it because she scares him a bit.
  • Bloo's Flanderization to a complete Jerkass is happening because Mac is starting to realize that he can't keep playing with a childish fantasy for the rest of his life. He is subconsciously making Bloo less likeable to make it easier to leave him. However, he isn't ready to let go of him yet, which is why Bloo has still some Jerk with a Heart of Gold moments. Mac doesn't want to hate him.
  • The sugar-craze is because Mac is allergic to sugar and also gets hyper off it. He's just exaggerating this condition in his fantasies.
    • Not allergic, but diabetic, which would make things even worse for the kid.
  • References to popular media are Mac integrating something he likes into his games and fantasies.
  • Another reason that Mac may have came up with 90% of the show - Craig McCracken said at Comic-Con that Mac and Terrence's father divorced their mother. Bloo might've been "created" as a psychological shield for Mac to get over this event.
  • There's a fan art piece that shows a variation of this sort of theory, depicting it as a "final episode". The twist is that it's Frankie doing the imagining. It also made her as an autistic kid staring at a snowglobe with the Foster's home in it. Wow, what a downer.

90% of the show is made up by Mac AND Mac is an old man in an old folks' home

The entire show is Mac's imagination. Mac is an old man with Alzheimer's who lives in a retirement home called Foster's. All of the imaginary friends are projections of his old friends and the more prominent imaginary friends are his family members and fellow inmates. This is the truth and it is sad.

Mac originally made Bloo to cope with his life, but started imagining Foster's after being hospitalized for a cracked skull Terrence gave him for talking about the imaginary friend one too many times.

The events of the first movie happened while he was still on painkillers in the hospital as Terrence told him horror stories about killing his imaginary friend. The half-senile lady who shared the room and her granddaughter/caretaker felt sorry for him and tried to help him with stories about Eduardo (a stuffed animal), Wilt (a line-of-sight character Frankie made up from the muted television) and Coco (a potted plant) helping him rescue Bloo, and then offered to take care of him in the afternoons for his mom while Terrence was in juvenile hall for causing the "accident." They just kept up the schedule after he got out, but let him start visiting of Saturdays, too (the adopt-a-friend-a-thon episode, where Mac tried to go to the Fosters' on his own and got lost at a weekly flea market near their house). The second movie, with Wilt, had him running away, but he was hit by a car; and the rest of it was a mish-mash of his own plans, Frankie trying to get through to him by talking about how much the Friends missed him, and the other guy in the room - a kid who was in the hospital for getting landed on in a particularly brutal game of basketball.

The Episode "Berry Scary" is a Take That against Sonic/Amy shippers

  • Bloo being Sonic and Berry being Amy, of course.

The Bloo in later series is not the same Bloo as in earlier series.

It's one of the hundreds of Bloos the kids at Mac's school imagined that has taken the place of the real Bloo. That's why Bloo is becoming a Jerkass; he's a fake whose attempts at imitating the real Bloo are crumbling. Meanwhile, the real Bloo is stuck with that ice skating troupe.

The reason Mac hasn't noticed? Because fake Bloo learned to do a good job.

Bloo is Mac's Shugo Chara

Not as in "He came from an egg", but as in "He's his would-be self/ The self he wants to be". Mac made Bloo up as a clever egoist because, deep inside, he wishes to be a clever egoist himself.

Why? Well, usually, it seems like their personalities were complete opposites. But we often get to see that Mac's "nice boy" personality brings him a lot of disadvantages, like in the Race-episode. Since Bloo always just does what he wants, he never has to deal with the problems that Mac has to deal with and tends to get what he desires much more often (even if that means that he's also in trouble a lot more often). And he's not sensible or allergic to sugar, like Mac is.

Also, a Shugo Chara/Would-Be Self does NOT have just positive qualities and may sometimes even bother the owner a lot, as seen with Tadase and Kiseki; Ikuto and Yoru; and even Amu and Ran. This is also true for Mac and Bloo; in fact, they are like Tadase and Kiseki (a nice boy and the king of egoism).


Every imaginary friend is/was/will be someone's Shugo Chara/would-be self

For example, Officer Nina created Eduardo (as seen in The Movie) because she wanted an imaginary friend who could protect her. When she grew up and became a policewoman, she already knew who she wanted to be--someone who could protect others--so she didn't need Eduardo any longer. There's also Wilt's creator, a professional basketballer.

Then there's Goo, who was lonely and wanted to be more popular so she could have more friends. She created thousands of would-be selves because they were all more interesting than her true self. Not to mention an episode with a blind kid who had an imaginary friend with hundreds of eyes, and the episode where it showed teenagers' imaginary friends were destructive monsters...

Madame Foster probably came across children who couldn't find their would-be self and were lost and miserable because they didn't know who they truly were, as well as abandoned imaginary friends, so she established Fosters' Home, to help others find their paths. (Alternatively, Fosters' Home is this universe's Heart Cradle.) This also explains why Frankie doesn't have an imaginary friend of her own: she knows that she is going to help other children find their would-be selves, so she doesn't need one herself.

  • That makes so much sense.
  • Somewhat confirmed. It's stated that Imaginary Friends are what the person needs. So they do help them reach their potential.

Inversly, they are what their creators don't want to be.

Bloo is a Jerkass; Mac is a nice guy. Wilt is constantly apologetic; Jordan Michaels is strong and asertive. Mister Herriman is a strict workaholic; Madame Foster is free spirited.

  • Note one point we meet one who was designed to be a bowling buddy, who was basically a bowling suit with a pin for a head, and was TERRIBLE at the game.

Bloo is Mac's Id personality

This means that Bloo is basically Mac without a conscience.

This theory has been popular for a while and is even mentioned in the Foster's Wiki. Bloo completely fits into this part of Freud's model of personality, except that he rarely displays sexual lust... Then again, he does in Frankie My Dear. Maybe Freud Was Right after all.

  • Justified by the fact that Mac is 8, and so he hasn't hit puberty yet.

Mac is Edward Norton's nameless Fight Club narrator

Long after Mac gives up on Bloo, Foster's, and imaginary friends as childish things that don't belong in the real world, some vestiges of Bloo still remain and eventually re-manifest themselves as Tyler Durden - mostly because no adult would have a shapeless blue... thingy named Bloo as an imaginary friend, even if they didn't know he was imaginary. This works scarily well.

Mac's sugar rushes are some of the suppressed parts of his personality emerging

Every kid gets a bit hyper when eating too much sugar, but Mac clearly has some suppressed energies that just explode out of him once the barricades open up. Growing up with a Missing Mom, who tried to convince him to be a "big boy" whenever she was not Missing, a completely Disappeared Dad, and an Evil Big Brother, Mac eventually learned that it's better to keep your mouth shut as much as possible if you don't want to get into trouble with bullies, neighbours, strangers on the streets, and the like. Also, being a nice boy gave him a higher score with his Mom to make her pay attention to him at least a little bit more. Therefore, he had to suppress anything selfish, wild, and childish within him. These suppressed parts manifested in two ways: First, the creation of Bloo, who is selfish and childish, but cute; and second, his Sugar Rush Mushroom Samba Persona, which is wild and unstoppable and doesn't care about anyone or anything, save sugar.

90% of the show was made up by Madam Foster.

Frankie's her caretaker, and the Friends are her cats. Goo was a stray cat that had a lot of kittens at the house, and Mac was one of Frankie's suitors.

  • That's.... depressing... and... dark.
  • Mac is too young to be a suitor of Frankie's.
    • Every guy under 30 is a cute little kid to Madame Foster.

Bloo just wants to be loved

His greatest fear is to be left alone. That's why he plays the Attention Whore so much that he's a Jerkass. He wants the others to think he's cool, awesome, AND cute because he thinks he won't be accepted otherwise, but rejected as "boring". He doesn't care about money or fame at all; he only cares about having people around him who like him. It backfires, but, well...

  • He thinks that if nobody's there to imagine him, he'll die.
    • Then why isn't Coco dead yet? You can't tell me those nerds are keeping her alive!
      • Bloo believes he will. Doesn't mean it's true.

Imaginary Friends can battle for the order of the Universe, and Bloo could be the savior of the universe

And only Madame Foster noticed how he was pure and interesting - in imagination matters, that is, and probably in power. It could explain how he doesn't get troubled by half of the things he does (and gets off lightly for the other half). He might have some sort of destiny warping or even mind control he doesn't know how to use.

Also, the teenager imagination monsters could be powerful enemies if there was an imaginative and sufficiently horrible teen to make a powerful enough monster... Mac's brother could do it if power of imagination is genetic - he's kinda evil - but he's also as dumb as a door.

    • Imaginative and sufficiently horrible, eh? Foster's is lucky that |Sid Phillips doesn't live in their world, then. Non-living toys means that he would likely have remained the way the first movie portrayed him. Add that to his status as a pseudo-Shadow Archetype to Andy...
  • Perhaps imaginary friends will be used in an all-out World War by someone enslaving children to try and take control of the Earth.
  • Goo will be classified as a Weapon of Mass Destruction.
  • A reality-warping power (s)he doesn't know about...!!! You mean Bloo's Haruhi?!

Mac and Goo both have Asperger Syndrome.

It makes sense. Take a look at Mac first: Intelligent, large vocabulary, afraid of changes, has problems finding friends in a normal social environment, but does easily find some in a place that's aloft of normality. And he's often bullied. (By his older brother, but still...) Also, he's been stated to be exceptionally creative. He also tends to become extremely nervous if something doesn't go as planned or if an important routine is broken. Another evidence are his sugar rushes: His neuronal-system seems to react differently to the sudden energy-burst than it should, which is a sign of changed brain-chemicals--> Autism. Following the "Bloo is Mac without a conscience"-theory gives us another hint: Bloo's total lack of empathy. Empathy can, to some degree, be learned; Mac has learned it, while Bloo hasn't.

Let's move on to Goo: In her case, it's probably Aspergers mixed with ADHD (yes, that DOES happen). Like Mac, she's pretty intelligent and creative; but she's also very fast talking, does not seem to notice when others fail to follow her words, has a strange way of walking, does not follow the "unwritten rules of society" (like "following a person around all the time is bad" or "showing up uninvited is impolite"), and has explicitly been stated to have no friends because she's "weird". Also, Goo herself says that she knows that she's weird, or "different", a feeling that most autistic children have.

  • This makes a dangerous amount of sense. Madam Foster may also have it.

Mac will grow up to become Kira.

His first victim will be an already grown-up (and away from home) Terrance, and his mother will marry again and have a girl. What? He already does look like Light.

Wilt will be Kira, and Mac will be the Aspergers-afflicted detective who opposes him.

Light started out wanting to make the world better, and it's been shown that Wilt can be pretty freaking evil when he snaps (though it's never stuck yet). That, combined with the above two guesses, resulted in this guess. Coco is the shinigami, and not a Friend at all. Coco shredded her Death Note to particulate matter so that anyone who entered the Home could see her, which is why she existed at least since the nerds-who-don't-believe-in-imaginary-friends found her.

  • Alternatively, Calvin will become Kira, and Mac will be L. You have to admit, it would be pretty cool to have the two become mortal enemies and oppose each other.

Madam Foster used to be like Goo, with the overactive Imaginary Friend creation.

That's why she started the home. Harriman was the only imaginary friend that really had its own personality, and was her best friend (real or imaginary), so she kept him.

Goofball has mind control powers.

However, they only work on other Imaginary Friends, so he couldn't keep Frankie from realizing what a jerk he really was. But by using his powers to make everyone else in the house think he was a great guy, he managed to get them on his side.

Foster ´s is actually a storage facility for government experiments.

The government has been creating creatures in an attempt to make a super weapon. To keep this a secret, the government teleports the "imaginary" friends to children´s room after using floride toothpaste and drinking water to subtly affect their imagination. Then they instituted Foster ´s as a storage facility for the friends after the child got bored. The most dangerous creations get put off as teenagers´ friends. The friends also get false memories implanted. All the technology needed for this operation was reverse engineered off of Megatron.

The episodes are not shown in the chronologically correct order.

That is to say, the very first and the very last episode really does show what happened first and last. But the episodes in between were often shown out of order. Proof of this is that in some episodes, Frankie seems to be weilding more authority - In "Adoptcalypse Now", "Go Goo Go" and "Better Off Ed" for instance, she's acting more like Mr. Herriman's deputy manager than like a subordinate housekeeper. Think about - in "Better Off Ed", Mr. Herriman and Frankie attend a home improvement seminar together; The old Mr. Herriman would've gone alone and told Frankie that doing chores is a better use of her time.

The big turning point was of course in "Destination Imagination", where Mr. Herriman finally learns to listen to Frankie and respect her. This would also mean that Goo didn't make her debut until after "Destination Imagination", which explains why she wasn't in this episode even though the rest of the gang was. Other episodes where you'd think it would be natural for Goo would be present - "Good Wilt Hunting", for instance - might also have taken place before "Go Goo Go".

Terrence created Duchess.

Think about it. They're both conniving, evil, among other things, maybe Terrence created Duchess, but he then forgot about it? Terrence does have a very bad memory.

  • I dunno, Terrence doesn't strike me as the type to have been cultured enough to create such a spoilt brat. And Duchess would have remembered.
    • Not to mention Terrence is too stupid to come up with anything more than a red box, or pizza.

Duchess is one of the oldest friends at the house, and has been there since Madame Foster had just recently started it up. Terrence is unlikely to be her creator.

The other Imaginary Friends were created by...

  • Duchess: A Spoiled Brat of a child with artistic aspirations (see Small Name, Big Ego). After putting up with Duchess for five minutes, they may have realized how unpleasant they are to other people.

Rainbow is in the same universe as Foster's

Well, the shows are somewhat similar. Both revolve around a greedy, self-centered blob (Zippy/Bloo), a timid, worrisome creature who likes toys (George/Eduardo), a tall, well-meaning character (Bungle/Wilt) and their friendly but easily annoyed human caretaker (Geoffrey/Frankie).

Anyway, in Rainbow, Zippy, George and Bungle are really imaginary friends. They're either Geoffrey's imaginary friends that he didn't want to let go of, or Geoffrey runs a British version of Foster's that isn't as successful.

In the Foster's universe, imaginary friends are a social minority

They're treated like pets even though most of them are intelligent and pretty much on the same level as humans. Plus, in Setting A President, we see that some businesses don't allow imaginary friends to work there.

    • While in "Emancipation Complication", we see that using imaginary friends for what is essentially slave labor, is considered acceptable.

They're all vampires.

And everybody knows vampires don't show up in pictures...

Mac loves Frankie. Nothing on her side.

Its kind of hinted at in the show as its a kids program. There's even an episode where Frankie goes on a date with a guy her age and Mac gets jealous.

  • This is pretty well established in the show. One episode includes Bloo daring Mac to tell Frankie that he loves her.

Foster's Home itself is an alternate universe parallel to Thorney Towers.

...Just an [dead link] impulse [dead link], really. Then again, it could even be Thorney Towers itself from a patient's (Mac's?) exaggerated point of view. In Psychonauts Fred is often called a pushover, Gloria has a tendency to not make much clear sense, Edgar is a Gentle Giant who is (generally) more avoidant than confrontational...

Coco is a Pokemon or some variant thereof.

Self-explanatory.

    • Would explain how she conquered Japan so easily...

The Madame Foster seen for at least part of the series is Frankie's imaginary friend.

There was a real Madame Foster, of course -- she dreamed up Funny Bunny Mr. Herriman, founded Fosters, and raised Frankie. However, people don't live forever... When she passed away, Frankie went into a Heroic BSOD before imagining that her grandmother was still alive, creating the Madame we see in the series. This is why Herriman seems to be completely in charge of the house at first, and part of why he's so hard on 'Miss Frances' -- not only does he feel she's not ready to follow in her grandmother's footsteps, but she's responsible for his having to cope with an imitation of his creator. He doesn't inform the imaginary Madame of this because, on some level, he's not ready to let go either, and seeing how thoroughly the news might hurt her... Well, he just can't bring himself to do that.

Foster's is a book series created by an adult Mac.

Mac managed to mature during the years but didn't lose his imagination, so he decided to re-shape his past adding the imaginary friends. Of course he could have kept some things like they were, such as Terrance's bullying, but he added Bloo and the others. Madame Foster could be a old lady he is friends with and Frankie could be his childhood crush and Madame's granddaughter. Goo could be a friend of Mac. The man could have become mildly social with the years, and decided to make a colorful story of that process.

Frankie is an imaginary friend created by Madame Foster.

This is why Frankie's parents are never mentioned, Frankie rarely leaves Foster's, and she doesn't have an imaginary friend of her own except for the scribbles. (Which would mean the scribbles were locked up, not because they were created by a baby, but because they were created by another imaginary friend.) Madame Foster just wanted kids, and since there isn't any mention of a "Mr. Foster", she decided to create Frankie.

  • I hate the word jossed so I won't use it but this was disproved by the memory of her as a child imagining the scribbles.
    Imaginary friends don't age.

Frankie's parents were killed by...

VOLDEMORT!

Foster's Home is located in a suburb of Townsville.

The monsters the Powerpuff Girls fight are actually Extremeosauri, and when they are defeated, the Foster's crew goes and picks them up to put them in one of their big metal boxes and take care of them. There's Powerpuff Girls merch scattered all around the canon, including Frankie's shirt, because they are real superheroes. The imaginary Mojo Jojo from the pilot was made up when his kid was watching the news, not cartoon. Don't believe me? Well, there WAS a PPG episode where a kid's imaginary friend was real...

  • This theory's further supported by Mac and Bloo's cameo in the PPG Rule special.
    • Although, were all the imaginary friends in PPG? You would think at least bubbles would come up with one.
      • All the monsters the PPG fight are some kind of imaginary friend.

Imaginary Friends don't have full rights in this universe

Let's review, adopting fully mature (and often VERY old) sentient beings without consent of said being is both very common, and considered a GOOD thing. The inverse of that, dumping a young one from the house is also just as normal as well. Terrance once made up a pizza one, and not with a second thought DEVOURED IT. You rarely see the imaginaries outside of the House with any kind of work, we only see Coca doing a few odd jobs in a Mall for one episode. That suggest that they are very least second class citizens, not really considered human but closer to entertainment for children. It doesn't help that kind of what they are.

Bendy's karma will eventually come because...

At the series finale of Foster's, Cheese has moved into Foster's and at the sound of all the screams from the residence, even Bendy is gonna have a huge nightmare dealing with Cheese. So finally, the Karma Houdini will finally get his Laser-Guided Karma at last. And hopefully, people will finally be relieved Karma hit Bendy very hard.

Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Foster%27s_Home_for_Imaginary_Friends/WMG?oldid=1635185"