On the Joker:
….Add some inevitable PTSD into the mix and suddenly you see Ledger’s Clown Prince of Crime for who he really is: an ex-soldier who became disfigured, snapped, and later spent the entire movie killing mayors, district attorneys, and police commissioners, aka people who in his troubled mind were representatives of the government that sent him to war.

On Kirk:
It’s a real mystery: After so many years of violating the law and Starfleet directives (often with his penis), how would anyone ever give Captain Kirk command of anything more complex than a broken down go-kart? How does a person even become such a reckless piece of shit with crippling authority issues? If you’ve paid attention to the title of this entry, you already know that the answer is “surviving a space-Holocaust.”

…The whoring, the insubordination, the apparent disregard for his own life … who wouldn’t turn out like that after his friends and family were killed by a space Nazi? And having to go through all of that when he was just 12? Kirk never had a chance, leaving him with only two ways to silence the traumatic voices in his head: living life to the fullest or manning up and boldly going to the nearest therapist’s office.

On Jack Sparrow:
From their short conversation we learn that, many years before the events of the first Pirates film, Jack was working for the EITC until he was trusted with transporting “cargo” that turned out to be a shipment of slaves. So, being Jack Sparrow, he set them free, simply telling Beckett in the deleted scene that “People aren’t cargo, mate.”

…Jack Sparrow goes from a morally ambiguous asshole to an all-around decent person. When he delivers the line, he doesn’t ruin it with any of his trademark silly gestures, instead saying it in a kind of sad, matter-of-fact way, almost as if he had to explain to another person that water is wet.

Even though what he did resulted in being branded a pirate, you don’t hear any hesitation in his voice, because for all the shitty things Jack Sparrow might have done, he’d never condemn an innocent person to a lifetime of slavery. It’s probably the most character development he’s gotten throughout all four Pirates movies, and it made him look so cool that of course they had to cut it…

6 Awesome Theories That Totally Change Famous Characters

Respected journalists they may not and may never be,  but no one can argue with the fact that the crew at Cracked are damn fine speculative pop culture theorists.