Every piece of information that we've gotten in the John Wick films about the shadowy world
of assassins has led to another mystery. Fortunately, fans have been coming up with explanations
for confusing moments and sketching out the history of the world. Here are the John Wick
fan theories that could be true.
If you've ever gone digging for fan theories, then you already know that the most common
ones, some of which are actually true, are those in which two movies are said to be in
the same universe simply because they have the same actor. Theories abound that try and
connect Steve Buscemi's Mr. Pink, who escapes at the end of Reservoir Dogs, to his role
as Carl Showalter in Fargo, where he's not so lucky, and you can find dozens of other
theories for dozens of other actors and roles.
John Wick is no different, although there's a surprising amount of convincing evidence
that fans have come up with to connect it to The Matrix. The theory imagines that "John
Wick" is an identity given to Neo years before the events of The Matrix in an attempt to
balance and correct for Neo's underlying desire to "get out." In The Matrix, that's obviously
getting out of the computer world. In John Wick, it's leaving the shadowy world of assassins
behind for a peaceful civilian life. By putting obstacles in John-slash-Neo's way, the Matrix
is able to keep his focus on escaping within their false reality so that he doesn't try
to get out into the real world and bring the whole thing down.
"You working again?"
"No, just sorting some stuff out."
It's also worth noting that the connection between the two franchises isn't just Keanu
Reeves. One of the two directors for John Wick, David Leitch, worked as a stunt coordinator
on The Matrix Revolutions. Are we grasping at straws here? Maybe. Or maybe this rabbit
hole goes even deeper. All we're offering is the truth...nothing more.
It's difficult to think of the reality presented by the John Wick films as, well, reality.
It's a world where hundreds of enemy assassins connected by a secret network of text messages
are lurking around every corner, where people can have gunfights in a crowded public place
without anyone noticing, and with fashionable suit jackets that can stop bullets. And, you
know, there's all those Mushroom Kingdom gold coins floating around, too. If all those things
made you feel like you were playing a video game while you were watching John Wick, you're
not alone. Nearly every review and article since the movie's release has mentioned the
film's obvious video game-inspired action. But what if that's actually the point? What
if this is actually supposed to be a video game?
Much like the Matrix fan theory, this one is mainly an attempt to explain why there
can be so much violence on screen that regular bystanders and real cops only occasionally
react to. The idea does have some legs, John himself does actually make an official licensed
appearance in a video game, Payday 2, and an actual John Wick game was released in 2019.
If this fan theory is true, that pretty much automatically makes John Wick the first legitimately
good video game movie. Our apologies to 2005's Doom, starring Karl Urban and the Rock. Better
luck next time.
The world of John Wick is defined by its rules, including debts and obligations that seem
pretty impossible to refuse. One rule stands above all, though: no matter what the assassins
are offered and what's been done to them in the past, they have to treat the Continental
as a violence-free establishment. Or else.
"You know the rules. No business may be conducted on these premises, lest incurring heavy penalties."
We see what happens to those who don't play along in the first film when Ms. Perkins violates
the Continental's well-established policy. After the bounty on John's head is doubled
for anyone willing to break the rules, she gives it a shot, trying to take John out while
he's injured and successfully eliminating another assassin, Harry.
By the end of the film, Ms. Perkins is sentenced to a permanent end, with the judgment carried
out by a squad of four people who surround her in all directions. It's a quick scene
meant to illustrate the price of crossing the line at the Continental, but the air of
tradition around it was very intriguing for fans. One fan theory supposes that the death
squad is, like much of the wider assassin culture that we see in the third film, more
ceremonial than practical, and based on centuries of tradition. The reason? Because if it's
not one of the elaborate rituals that we see throughout the series, it doesn't make a whole
lot of sense to surround someone on all sides and shoot them
There's a very obvious reason that firing squads here in the real world don't stand
directly in front of each other and then fire at someone in the middle, so the only way
the scene makes sense is if it's actually based on an older tradition, likely one involving
blades instead of bullets. If it was originally done as a ceremony with swords, then adapting
it to the modern world with guns seems a little more logical, especially when you consider
what we see in Chapter 3. Not only do we find out about the long history of the assassins
and their formalities, but we learn that somebody taught John to be pretty good with knives.
One of the many strikingly strange moments in the John Wick franchise comes when we see
the inner workings of assassin bureaucracy, and find out that it's mostly secretaries
typing on absurdly outdated computers. It could just be an unexpected visual flourish
to add some flavor to an otherwise boring scene, but one fan theory makes the pretty
compelling argument that of course the assassins would use the outdated tech. It makes their
information virtually unhackable.
Although it's never been explicitly confirmed in the films, it seems pretty clear that we're
looking at some very interesting information security. Modern computers might be faster
and have more capabilities, but it's pretty hard to use a Macbook to hack a Commodore
64 and a bunch of hard copy paper files, especially when they use rotary phones and pneumatic
tubes instead of the Internet. There's definitely some connection since we see all those texts
going out, but from what we can tell, the heavily tattooed administrators are keeping
things on an old school lockdown.
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