'10 Cloverfield Lane' Already Has Spawned These 5 Weird Theories

Asking again: Is this mysterious sequel a Voltron movie?

Remember Cloverfield? It’s been eight years so it’s okay if you forgot, but it was a horror movie from 2008 where a bro named Rob rescues his ex after a big-ass monster awakens to tear shit up in Manhattan. It’s like Godzilla but in found-footage style. It had an awesome trailer and was ridiculously shrouded in mystery.

We’ve known for a while that a sequel was possible; today, it became official that 10 Cloverfield Lane will be dropping this March, starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead and John Goodman.

J.J. Abrams, who’s producing, said 10 Cloverfield Lane isn’t a direct sequel but another story, possibly in an anthology format. It’s not taking the original movie’s plot, setting, or characters; whatever happened to Rob and Beth in Central Park will probably stay a mystery. Also, they’re probably dead.

The official synopsis, per IMDB:

Waking up from a car accident, a young woman (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) finds herself in the basement of a man (John Goodman) who says he’s saved her life from a chemical attack that has left the outside uninhabitable.

“He tells me that basically the world is over outside because there’s been a nuclear fallout,” Winstead told Collider about her relationship with Goodman’s mysterious man. “There’s a lot of, who’s manipulating who, and all of that.” The film also stars John Gallagher Jr. as a fellow bunkmate. Technically, they’re not really alone, despite what the trailer’s song would tell you.

That leaves a lot of room for guessing! So let’s fill that space. Here’s what might explain their predicament.

5) The nuclear fallout is from bombing the “Cloverfield” monster.

10 Cloverfield Lane is allegedly divorced from the original movie, but presumably it’s in the same universe. We know for sure it’s not in the same physical place. Check out the poster: That doesn’t look like Manhattan.

In the first Cloverfield, the monster is attacked with the Hammer Down Protocol, a totally made up military strategy to kill targets by any means necessary. Maybe “by any means necessary” means “a lot of nukes.”

That brings us to 10 Cloverfield Lane. The world is ruined because we bombed the shit out of it.

4) Or from trying to rid the monster’s babies.

Hey, remember these freaky Cloverbabies that filled the subways?

And remember how Marlena (Lizzy Caplan) got scratched, bit, and later died in the most gruesome death in the whole movie, second only to Hud getting chomped in half?

What if the nuclear fallout wasn’t from killing the monster, but the monster’s babies? Those guys populated really, really quickly just hours after the monster showed up. How many would there be after weeks? Months? Years?

3) The setting is post-2014.

Threatening to dispel the last theory that the world is over is Winstead’s character holding a very specific iPhone 6 in the trailer.

The iPhone is the biggest enemy against any connections 10 Cloverfield Lane has to Cloverfield. Think about it: Why would Apple continue production when the world is over? Also, Winstead is taken in by Goodman after an accident. It’s when she wakes up to discover the world is messed up.

Cloverfield, though released in 2008, might have taken place in 2009. It is without a doubt in the late aughts, evidenced by the level of consumer tech in the movie. The movie is told through a camcorder. When was the last time you used those? Coupled with Rob’s party music and his final words before the film ends, Cloverfield must occur in or around 2009. (He states the date as Saturday, May 23rd. May 23rd was on a Saturday in 2009.)

So if the first Cloverfield happens in 2008/2009 and 10 Cloverfield Lane is sometime after 2014, what happened in the years between? Nothing, because if this theory is correct then there are no in-universe connections to the two movies.

But if there are?

2) John Goodman’s character knew about the Cloverfield monster and Slusho for a long time. Hence, he’s prepared.

The iPhone 6 aside, there is a barrage of dated, analog tech in the bunker, which makes sense given Goodman’s character wanted to survive a nuclear aftermath. What good is Roku?

But does that mean Goodman’s character knew ahead of time and prepared for the collapse of civilization?

Check how loaded the bunker is with a curious symbol: the Eiffel Tower.

Seriously. It’s everywhere.


Pointed out on Reddit, citing Gustave Eiffel’s statement on the tower’s construction:


A symbol of scientific enlightenment, the Tower’s predominance alludes to the technological progress that created the hell that forces them to the bunker. This backs up the theory that 10 Cloverfield Lane connects to Cloverfield, where it’s heavily implied the original monster was created from chemical waste by Slusho, a Japanese soft drink predominant in Cloverfield’s viral marketing years ago.

In the last scene of Cloverfield, Rob’s tape cuts back to his date on Coney Island with Beth, pre-monster, and the two are oblivious to a falling satellite which fans speculate involves the monster’s origins. Some don’t subscribe to Slusho creating the monster, but gather instead that it’s from outer space. Possibly the satellite was a government operation to find and contain the monster before it got loose.

Was John Goodman’s doomsday guy a known whistleblower from high up? In the very beginning of Cloverfield, the Department of Defense has designated the monster case “Cloverfield.” Why would they name the case after the street where Goodman’s character lives?

1) The home at 10 Cloverfield Lane is in New York.

A Google search for “10 Cloverfield Lane” brings up a personal — and I should stress, private — address, albeit with a slightly different name. But the big exclamation point is that the street is in New York.

A nuke of modern capabilities is more than sufficient enough to cover and properly fuck up the ground between suburban New York and Manhattan.

If a Hammer Down Protocol sends our military into a panic and unleashes total hell, it’s not unreasonable to think that at least the tri-state area is what got totally fucked.

BONUS THEORY: The film is a Voltron movie.

Hey, we actually thought that was a thing at one point.

Media via Paramount, NuclearSecrecy