- [Narrator] Aliens experiments, assassinations,
they're not just conspiracy theories
that show up in season two of the "Umbrella Academy".
They're part of American culture.
We are a nation of believers,
but the question you might have after watching is
how real was any of it?
So we went episode by episode to identify
and explain every conspiracy theory reference
we could find in the show, and there are a lot.
- What are you up to?
- [Narrator] The showrunner, Steve Blackman promised us
he buried some really deep.
So if you see any that we missed, let us know,
and we'll do another one of these
until we get to the truth.
(ominous music)
Okay, right away, in the first episode,
we start with a conspiratorial bang.
- You ever heard of Area 51, Roswell?
- [Narrator] Yep, everyone has.
They're huge.
But one reason these conspiracy theories have stuck is that,
shockingly, the government actually confirmed some of it,
briefly, anyway.
So in 1947, a rancher in New Mexico
about 75 miles North of Roswell,
drives by the wreck of something in the desert
that startles him.
It's shiny and out of place.
He takes it to the local sheriff who, in turn,
takes it to the local military base.
They gather all the remaining pieces,
and this is the extraordinary part,
issue a statement to the local paper
that the military has taken possession of a flying saucer.
Whoa.
- [Narrator] But they retracted that statement
the very next day, instead claiming
it was just a weather balloon.
- Tracking anomalies in the atmosphere.
- [Narrator] But the story had already gotten out there,
and it continued to grow
when tabloids printed the original story
but not the retraction.
Suddenly, people claimed
that they had seen alien bodies being examined at Roswell.
And the rumors spread that the Roswell craft
and its occupants had been taken to Area 51,
an ultra secure military facility, to be tested
and reverse engineered.
To be fair, the place does sort of give off
that morally suspect experiment vibe.
But the government's behavior has at least one plausible,
non-alien explanation.
- I'm a fraud.
I've been lying to all of you from the start.
- [Narrator] Declassified documents have revealed
that the "weather balloon" may have actually been part
of Project Mogul, a high tech, high altitude spy vessel
designed to monitor Soviet nuclear tests.
It was extremely sensitive,
so that's why the government was keen
to say basically anything but the truth, including aliens.
Is the truth out there?
Well, this one's hard, but we have every reason
to believe this picture is accurate,
and it looks like a balloon?
So Roswell is maybe a little overblown.
(suspenseful music)
So maybe I'm reading too much into it,
but there's a very sinister milk vibe that starts
in the first episode and really picks up in the second.
Not only do the Swedish assassins drive around
in a milk truck and wear milkman outfits
and gulp down the bottles of dairy,
but there are a couple of strangely prominent shots of cows
during the season when characters are being threatened.
Hmm.
Maybe, hear me out, all of this is the show's nod
to a sinister milk conspiracy theory
that says that big dairy has colluded with big government
for years to sell us milk we don't need.
- What's that?
- [Narrator] Notice how the Swedish milk assassins report
to the quasi-governmental commission?
One fact the spoiled milk believers point to
is the three recommended servings of dairy per day
when up to 25% of American adults
can't even digest the stuff. (man burps)
And there's the fact that milk is traditionally one
of only two drinks allowed on the Senate floor.
There's special precedent that allows for it.
Finally, milk had a dark past in the Cold War.
The CIA came closest to assassinating Fidel Castro
with a chocolate milkshake,
despite what you may have heard about a cigar.
So this one seems pretty plausible.
I mean the USDA, who sets our nutritional guidelines,
also made all of those "Got Milk?" ads.
Drink carefully.
- AJ!
- We're introduced to the inner workings
of the Commission in the second episode,
but it really takes the whole season to grasp their odd mix
of tedious bureaucracy and
(grenade explodes) horrible violence.
- Over the next 90 minutes,
I'm gonna do my best to show you around this whole place.
You and I are gonna have some fun together.
- [Narrator] The show never uses the words,
but the Commission shares a lot
with the conspiracy theory known as the Deep State.
I mean, it can see everything.
It has goons, but it's kinda boring.
It literally fixes timeline
so there's absolutely no deviation from its plan.
- Shame.
- [Narrator] And it fits well
with the formal definition, too,
which is a shadow institution that governs independent of
and often at cross purposes
to a legitimate democratically elected body.
- Any questions?
- [Narrator] Before 2017, in our world,
Deep State was actually a somewhat obscure phrase
typically used to talk about nations, like Turkey or Egypt,
where a strong military not so secretly ran things
instead of the civilian government.
Now (sighs) it's everywhere.
Believers say that everything from the coronavirus
to a $31,000 taxpayer funded dining set debacle
is evidence of the Deep State acting up.
And there seem to be more of those believers than not.
In a stunning 2018 poll, 74% of Americans said
that the Deep State was at least probably real.
But even skeptics admit some large institutions (coughs)
need oversight, lest they become deep statey,
just not all of them.
(lasers fire)
Look, let's just all be thankful
the CIA hasn't discovered time travel, okay?
Elsewhere in the second episode,
the "Umbrella Academy" kids discovered
that their father may, in fact, be the Umbrella Man.
(crickets chirp)
Well, if you haven't heard of him, that's okay
because there are so many sub-conspiracies spinning off
of the Kennedy assassination, that it's hard to keep track,
but for more than a decade,
the Umbrella Man was a person of interest in the killing.
He shows up in the Zapruder film,
the real life equivalent of the Frankel film from the show,
near the site of the assassination.
He seems formally dressed,
especially for a parade on a warm, sunny day,
and he raises an umbrella
as President Kennedy's motorcade goes by,
moments before the shooting. (gun fires)
Many thought.
- What the hell is he doing standing on the grassy knoll,
holding an open, black umbrella on a sunny day in Dallas
the exact same moment the president gets shot?
- [Narrator] Was he signaling the shooter?
Did the umbrella itself shoot a dart
that immobilized Kennedy?
There were, indeed, umbrella weapons in the Cold War.
Unlike many other persons of interest
in conspiracies though, (men grunt)
authorities got to question the Umbrella Man in public
when he voluntarily stepped forward to appear
before a House committee in 1978.
His name was Louie Steven Witt,
and he claimed that he only wanted to heckle Kennedy.
It's a bit convoluted,
but the umbrella referenced Neville Chamberlain,
the Nazi appeasing, British prime minister
who always carried one
and who Kennedy's father had strongly supported.
He even demonstrated that the umbrella had no weapons.
- Presidential assassination, it's never been his thing.
- [Narrator] And it probably wasn't
the real Umbrella Man's either.
Let him heckle in peace.
(haunting piano music)
One big problem with conspiracy theories
is that there's this lack
of real stuff you can latch onto, but.
- Holy shit.
- [Narrator] That's not the case with crop circles
like the one Vanya creates in the third episode.
These real and kind of beautiful symmetrical areas
of flattened crops are physical proof
that something totally weird is happening.
And this might blow your mind,
but believers say the weirdness of crop circles
goes back way farther than I imagined.
In 1678, yes, 1678, a woodcut pamphlet
called "The Mowing-Devil" told a tale
of a bitter lawn cutting negotiation, I dunno,
that led to the devil cutting what appears
to be a pretty good circle in a farmer's crops.
Skip forward with me to the 1960s.
(ice crashes)
And there's a more familiar example.
the saucer nests of Tully, Australia.
A local farmer, believing he had seen a UFO, investigated,
and what he found were large circles in the brush,
like a flying saucer parking space.
In the 1970s, crop circles spread across the globe,
although they still seemed to be concentrated
in Southern England.
One theory is that aliens or even human time travelers
from a distant future are leaving these as messages
for us to decipher.
Others say, governments are using lasers and satellites
for unknown but nefarious purposes.
But the easiest explanation is that human hoaxers
are the real cause.
In 1991, two pranksters inspired by Tully admitted
that they'd been behind many of England's crop circles,
just using simple tools,
and they allegedly inspired copycats.
But it still doesn't necessarily explain
all the physical evidence.
One estimate says there's a new crop circle every night.
Something out there is mowing our lawns, people.
- It's, oh, right here.
- [Narrator] It's hard to compete
with Elliot's succinct explanation
of the Majestic Twelve in episode four.
- A secret committee, scientists, military, Deep State,
no one knows what they really do.
- [Narrator] Well, basically, yeah,
but because I'm getting paid to do this,
the Majestic Twelve is allegedly a group of scientific
and military heavyweights brought together
by Harry Truman in the wake of Roswell
to investigate and prevent alien incursions.
But it wasn't until 1984,
when a documentary producer named Jaime Shandera
received an envelope through his mail slot,
that anyone knew anything about it.
That envelope contained film of the documents
that authorized the Majestic Twelve,
and it also revealed the Twelve's identities.
They were bigwigs like Dr. Vannevar Bush, former head
of the Office of Scientific Research and Development,
and Rear Admiral Sidney Souers,
the first head of the CIA.
But if the Majestic Twelve were focused on aliens,
then why are they hunting Kennedy in the show?
- [Man] We cannot allow him to get his nose
into our business.
I've confirmed the motorcade will indeed
be turning left on Elm street.
- [Narrator] Because this is
where the two biggest conspiracy theories of them all,
UFOS and the Kennedy assassination,
crossover with each other.
According to believers,
the Majestic Twelve brokered an agreement with aliens
in the 1950s that allowed for human abductions
in exchange for technology that would lead
to the Stealth Bomber.
When Kennedy threatened to expose them,
even allegedly sending the CIA a memo
about aliens a week before his death, he was killed.
But as skeptics looked closer,
they found problems with Shandera's documents.
There were errors in formatting and anachronisms,
like media instead of press,
that suggested the documents were forgeries.
- Oh, my God.
- [Narrator] In its review in 1988,
the FBI went so far as to scribble "bogus" all over it.
Harsh.
Some still feel that the documents were a campaign
of misinformation aimed at Cold War enemies.
So maybe there's something here, but on the other hand,
they might just prove a recurring motif in season two,
(suspenseful music)
be skeptical of documents that are handed to you.
- I was desperate to find you
a chimp-related conspiracy theory to go along
with Pogo's journey to outer space in the fifth episode.
But the U.S. government has been
uncharacteristically aboveboard on the subject.
The first chimp to cross the threshold
into space was Ham in early 1961,
the strongest of a class of 40 Astrochimps.
He was followed shortly thereafter
by Enos who actually orbited the earth,
and that was the end of American chimps in space.
But while it's not as world shattering
as some of our other examples,
there is an ongoing space monkey conspiracy theory.
See, in 2013, Iran announced they had successfully sent
a monkey into space as part
of their increasingly sophisticated space program.
But critics noted that the monkey they showed off
in a subsequent press conference
didn't resemble the one from before launch,
and yeah, it's kind of obvious.
(monkey squeals)
So did the monkey die?
Did Iran fake it altogether?
For its part, Iran just says it used an archival photo
of a different monkey for the before shot,
but it looks fishy since some
of Iran's previous monkey launch attempts were fatal,
or maybe something else happened up there.
Has anyone checked to see if the same Pogo came back?
Dah dah dah.
(elevator music)
Diego is apparently a believer in lizard people.
- Your boyfriend isn't the nice guy you think he is.
Him and his nasty, little squad of lizard people
are planning to kill Kennedy the day after tomorrow.
- [Narrator] And maybe the weirdest part
is that he's not alone in that.
(slow claps)
This number is debated,
but allegedly 12 million Americans believe
that a group of ancient, bloodthirsty
and shape-shifting reptilian humanoids
have infiltrated the highest reaches of society
with the goal of enslaving humanity (gasps).
To put that in perspective,
and these were the first things that popped up,
that's the same number who kept a secret fund
from their partner or drove stoned in 2018.
It's a lot of believers
in murderous space-faring chameleons.
And the King of lizard belief
is a former BBC sports announcer named David Icke.
He quite literally wrote the book on the reptilians in 1988,
and to this day, his website is a main resource
on the subject.
And they also have a web shop.
(party horns toot)
One reason it's such a clever conspiracy
is that it plays well with others.
Freemasons and the Illuminati both allegedly report
into the lizard people.
Icke laid out the attributes that lizard people tend
to have in human form, good hearing, reddish hair,
light eyes, an interest in space,
a sense of being apart from humanity.
Wait, so this whole time,
is it possible that Reginald was a?
(jaunty circus music) (children shriek)
Of course, believers have used those criteria
to out reptilians masquerading
as big time politicians and celebrities.
I mean, it's objectively crazy.
There are obviously no lizard people,
but that's exactly what a lizard person
would want you to believe.
At first, I didn't think much about this exchange
on time travel in the sixth episode.
- Start small, seconds, not decades.
- [Narrator] But it may be a very clever reference
to the Philadelphia Experiment
where the alleged time travel only lasted,
you guessed it, seconds.
- No offense, but I need a bit more time
for what I'm trying to accomplish.
- [Narrator] It should be plural, though,
because believers saved the first Philadelphia Experiment
happened in July, 1943 at the Philadelphia Naval Yard.
There, the Navy performed an experiment
on a newly commissioned destroyer, the USS Eldridge,
that turned its 1200-ton bulk totally invisible.
Where did she go?
But even bigger feats were on the horizon
because in October that year,
a blue light was seen engulfing the Eldridge,
which then disappeared.
It traveled a few seconds back in time to pop up
in Norfolk Harbor where it was allegedly witnessed
by a sailor on a troop transport ship.
Believers say the experiment had a steep cost.
Some sailors were supposedly fused
into the hull of the ship.
But ironically, there are problems
with the theory's timeline.
- You know time travel is possible.
- Time travel isn't the problem.
- [Narrator] July of 1943,
the Eldridge wasn't even commissioned,
and in October, records put it in New York
while the observing ship was in the Mid-Atlantic.
But while time travel and men becoming painfully one
with the ship probably didn't happen
as the 1984 movie would suggest,
go watch it after "Umbrella Academy" and report back,
the Navy was indeed testing out a new technique
that made a ship invisible to mines.
So semantically, in some fashion, sure,
the Philadelphia Experiments were partly real,
and we all travel through time.
You know?
- I was really hoping you had more than that.
- [Narrator] The show doesn't drop the code name MKUltra
in the eighth episode
because all it needs to do is show this,
government agents and LSD together.
LSD was so integral to the secret, sinister
and widespread CIA program, that, at one point,
America considered buying the entire world supply
of the drug for $240,000.
The CIA started MKUltra in 1953 under the leadership
of an agency chemist named Sidney Gottlieb.
He's since developed this colorful nickname.
Believing that communists had deployed
mind control techniques or drugs during the Korean War,
the CIA set out to counter with a mind control drug
of their own.
So for more than a decade,
they illegally tested drugs, like LSD,
and tortures, like electroshock,
on many unwitting American citizens,
from soldiers to the mentally ill to inmates.
But if that wasn't enough for you,
they also did real super villain stuff.
Not only did they, according to one author,
hire former Nazi and Imperial Japanese torturers
as consultants, but at a party,
Gottlieb himself spiked the drinks of his fellow scientists
with LSD, causing the eventual death of one
who became depressed and fell out of a window.
Probably very wisely, the CIA tried to cover this up,
but it came out anyway in newspapers
and Congressional hearings.
This one's very real and very scary.
So you can kind of understand why Elliot acts so squirrelly.
- You from the Pentagon?
- Definitely not.
- CIA, FBI, KGB?
- [Narrator] Don't do drugs,
at least not when the CIA's offering.
In the second to last episode,
we start to hear a little of what Reginald cares about.
- Your interests on the dark side of the moon
won't be affected.
- [Narrator] Dark is a bit inaccurate.
There's light there,
but there is indeed a far side of the moon.
The same face always points away from the Earth
because the moon is what's called tidally locked.
And this mysterious and tantalizing far side
has split moon conspiracy theorists into two main camps.
The larger group believes that we faked the moon landing
and have never been there,
while the far-siders think the government went farther
than they said and saw more on the moon than they let on.
The godfather of the far-side conspiracists
is Milton William Cooper, an influential author
who is known for his eerily accurate predictions.
(whistles)
Cooper believed that Apollo 11 astronauts saw
and even filmed an alien base on the far side of the moon,
one that was used to refuel giant alien spaceships.
Of course, the aliens warned the astronauts to stay away.
And even though the U.S. government was well aware
of the base, even naming it Luna,
they covered it all up
and quickly stopped going to the moon.
NASA denies these claims.
Lest you scoff too hard at this, weird stuff does happen
on the far side of the moon.
Astronauts have heard strange music emanating from it,
but it may have just been radio interference.
Given that the Chinese have recently landed on the far side
and said nothing though,
this might be one prediction that Cooper got wrong.
But an alien base on the far side would help prove
that Reginald is.
(jaunty music)
"O conspiracy, shamest thou to show thy dangerous brow
"by night when evils are most free?"
- Great, your dad majored in Shakespeare, too, huh?
- [Narrator] (clears throat) Well.
We've gathered together most of the references
to the alleged aliens and assassins and experiments
of the "Umbrella Academy's" conspiracy laden second season.
Whether you believe it is up to you.
Except that Reginald really is a reptilian monster
from the far side of the. (children shriek)
(jaunty music)
So there was a more earthly but no less strange theory
from the 1980s about crop circle creation.
Some thought, how do I put this,
that vigorously sexual hedgehogs caused them.
And if they can do that,
who knows what the hedgehogs are capable of?
(ominous music)