10 Jaw-Dropping Video Game Fan Theories That Make Everything Better

7. Assassin's Creed: Those Crazy Animus Conversations

Did you ever play Assassin's Creed, and just after taking down your target as you're chatting away to them you wonder; "Wait, why has the world around me completely stopped? How am I able to have a full conversation with a dying person, when just a few seconds ago I shot them from atop a roof, or ran in blades-first?"

Well, being that we're already in a virtual simulation it's mostly believed that these scenes are the Animus machine pausing the world, or establishing a connection between the user and the victim... or something. The problem is that this specific element of the game's premise is never fully explored. Instead we got entire halves of games devoted to playing as Desmond, milling around science labs and modern-day settings - never fully understanding exactly what the Animus is or does.

So what if these conversations never really happened? If we take the idea of the Bleeding Effect (where abilities transfer from the person being watched to the user in the Animus) and run with it, we know the machine can somehow harness DNA and transfer it to someone like Desmond.

A certain fan theory purports that because of this ability, the Animus is 'recreating' these conversations for the user alone - even though they didn't happen. Based purely off the idea of two people coming into contact with each other, DNA is transferred and stored between each person in any given scenario - which in this case would be the assassinations themselves.

It's weird that in a game whose lore now contains gods and ancient races, we still don't know how a core piece of machinery works, but this is a pretty cool way of looking at it.