Depressing Casper theory solves why his ghost looks nothing like him
Halloween is here and if you're going for your annual rewatch of Casper, we're here with a depressing theory that could change how you watch it.
One long-running topic of debate has been about the ghosts' appearances in the movie, as they appear to be inconsistent. With all due respect to Casper, he doesn't look a thing like Devon Sawa when we see Casper in his human form at the end. Like his uncles, he looks vaguely human, but it's not defined in any way.
Compare that to Carrigan (Cathy Moriarty) and Dr Harvey (Bill Pullman) when they die and briefly become ghosts. Their ghosts look extremely similar to their human selves and even retain details like the clothes they were wearing, like Dr Harvey's fetching cardigan.
A theory from Reddit user Jacob_wallace has suggested that there's actually a fairly bleak reason behind the variations in ghosts. Quite simply, Casper has forgotten what he even looks like.
They argue that the longer a ghost stays as a ghost, the less like a human they'll end up looking. It's not specified exactly when Casper died, but it was likely decades before the movie is set in the mid-1990s.
"He's several decades old. His uncles are even older than he is," they continue. "Whereas Kat's dad and Carrigan were dead for less than a day. If they were allowed to linger over the years, their ghost forms would've warped into more inhuman features as seen on the trio and Casper."
It's a depressing thought, but it is one that's backed up by a scene in the movie where Kat (Christina Ricci) asks Casper what he was like when he was alive. Casper admits that he doesn't remember, despite her prompts about what school he went to or what his favourite song was.
She wonders why he doesn't remember about his life and he replies: "I guess because when you're a ghost, your life doesn't matter that much any more, so you forget."
When Kat restores Casper's old playroom, his memory is jogged and he remembers certain things about his father and that haunting bit about how he died. However, it stands to reason that if he's been hanging out with nobody but his uncles for years, it's not a surprise he's forgotten other bits about how he looked or how he dressed.
Let's be honest, after this past year, does any of us really remember what happened when or what we did last month?
It's even an idea that's explored in The Haunting of Bly Manor as the ghosts, such as the Lady in the Lake, who haunt the manor start to forget what they looked like, leaving their faces a creepy blank canvas.
You heard it hear first, Casper and The Haunting of Bly Manor are part of a spiritual shared universe we never even knew existed.
Casper is available to watch now on Sky Cinema and NOW.
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