Guide to Alternate Universes

It took me a while to realize just what in the world (or worlds) was going on in Donnie Darko, but the Director's Cut of the film makes it much more explicit. Dramatically, it is a failure (stick with the original cut) but I now get it that the bunny in the suit is a representative from an alternate reality in Donnie's space-time trajectory. For some reason, he splintered off on a tangent but, luckily, this ripple is more like a wave and space-time can rectify itself quickly and not that much damage. If that blows your mind a bit, just focus on the sped up shots to Tears For Fears songs instead.

This one is a double shot for nerds. When Mom's mother-of-all dark matter crystals meets Professor Farnsworth's anti-backwards crystals it fuses with the dark matter Bender has stored in his body and zaps them to the land of Cornwood – where the characters from Futurama live according to the rules of Dungeons and Dragons. Leela is a Centaur, Bender a knight, Farnsworth a wizard and decisions are made with twelve-sided dice.

Hill Valley, you are the insecure teenager of the alternate universes...universe. Sometimes you old and dusty and rough, and sometimes you are futuristic with hover boards and holographic sharks biting people in the streets. Sometime your courthouse square is a 27-level casino built and others, it is the beating heart of hope, providing the jolt Marty and Doc need to make things right. In the end, you can change hair and wear different costumes but with a little bit of luck, some elbow grease and the power of love, we can make you, Hill Valley, almost exactly as you once were.

Down the rabbit hole you go with the red bill. Updating the Alice in Wonderland trope and drawing from various sources like The Invisibles, The Matrix delighted sci fi fans down to their very core. Bullet time videography drew us deeper into an illusionary reality created by alien race of machines. All the rules of reality change when you know you're in the Matrix. Psychics becomes reasonable defiable, morality loses its weight, and deja vu finally means something concrete.

Neo, Morpheus and the rest of the crew on the Nebuchadnezzar are an elite handful of people lucky enough to wake up and see the alternate (and artificial) universe the rest of the world lives in. Now only if we could all wake up, man.