The Tommy Westphall Universe
Posted: Fri Jul 17, 2015 12:11 am
A lot of you have probably heard of this already but I actually ran into a current,most updated diagram of all the shows that have crossed over in the Tommy Westphall Universe.
For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, the Tommy Westphall Universe is a fan theory - sort of. In the 80's soap opera, St. Elsewhere, the entire show supposedly took place in an autistic child's mind - Tommy Westphall. It's implied in the final moments of the final episode where Tommy is holding a snowglobe with a building that looks like the hospital where the show takes place. While "St. Elsewhere" is an actual medical slang term, you could go as far as to say that the name of the show implies that the location is, well, literally "elsewhere". . . away in Tommy's mind.
The fan theory states that since many TV shows cross over and reference each other, those said TV shows that are traced back to St. Elsewhere are also therefore a part of Tommy's imagination.
And there are a lot.
While I'm not so interested in the theory itself per se, it's really cool to see how many shows connect down the line by references. The connections could be direct or indirect, whether characters from one show cross over or an event is reference or an object is seen - whatever the case may be.
The way the diagram is read is that a show's name is boxed in. If that box touches another box, that means there's a connection between those two shows.
For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, the Tommy Westphall Universe is a fan theory - sort of. In the 80's soap opera, St. Elsewhere, the entire show supposedly took place in an autistic child's mind - Tommy Westphall. It's implied in the final moments of the final episode where Tommy is holding a snowglobe with a building that looks like the hospital where the show takes place. While "St. Elsewhere" is an actual medical slang term, you could go as far as to say that the name of the show implies that the location is, well, literally "elsewhere". . . away in Tommy's mind.
The fan theory states that since many TV shows cross over and reference each other, those said TV shows that are traced back to St. Elsewhere are also therefore a part of Tommy's imagination.
And there are a lot.
While I'm not so interested in the theory itself per se, it's really cool to see how many shows connect down the line by references. The connections could be direct or indirect, whether characters from one show cross over or an event is reference or an object is seen - whatever the case may be.
The way the diagram is read is that a show's name is boxed in. If that box touches another box, that means there's a connection between those two shows.