There’s a wild fan theory that the Stranger Things universe is connected to the one in Stephen King‘s It, and all has to do with Bob “the Brain” Newby.
Quick warning: This post has minor spoilers for Stranger Things S2, so if you haven’t finished the season, either read this knowing a couple small things might be spoiled or go straight back to Netflix and binge.
Okay, we’re all still here? Good. Here’s how the Stranger Things and It universes are connected.
Remember how Bob was giving Will some (pretty bad, as it turned out) advice about how to deal with night terrors? Bob was terrified of a clown when he was young, which most people would instantly compare to Pennywise from It. That thing was the default scary clown, after all, and the film only came out a few months ago.
But the fan Twitter account @UpsideDownFacts pointed out that Bob’s parents came from Maine, where the fictional town of Derry from It was also located.
Bob’s parents are from Maine, and he was haunted by an evil clown when he was a kid which would’ve been in the late 50’s #StrangerThings pic.twitter.com/G1SfJiCHRd
— Stranger Facts (@DexertoST) October 29, 2017
And although the 2017 film was set in the 80s, the childhood timeline from the book was actually in the 50s. The dates therefore line up for Bob, an adult in the 80s timeline of Stranger Things, was a child when Pennywise was last terrorising Derry in the 50s.
If you remember Bob’s advice to Will, the clown stopped terrorising him once he told it to “GO AWAY!”; Pennywise feeds on fear, and only when the kids of It stopped giving in to that fear did they defeat it.
Then another user pointed out that Finn Wolfhard, who stars in Stranger Things and the 2017 version of It, says the exact same line in both.
Finn Wolfhard says the same line in both #StrangerThings and the movie IT pic.twitter.com/70RvYf1AwG
— Stranger Facts (@DexertoST) October 29, 2017
So the line is only, “Holy shit, what happened to you?”, but it’s still cool.
Of course, since we have already established the fact that Stranger Things and Parks and Recreation exist within the same universe, then it only goes to reason that Parks and Rec and It all exist within the same universe as well.
This means only one thing: I am absolutely going to need to see a crossover where Pennywise terrorises Pawnee, and April Ludgate / Burt Macklin come in to save the day. I need this.
