The Hunger Games trilogy quickly cemented itself as a staple in young adult fiction when it hit bookshelves in 2008. Thanks to an excellent set of films based on the books, and a prequel novel, its fanbase has only continued to grow as new generations discover the films on streaming services. With that comes fresh eyes to the dystopian series and a bevy of elaborate fan theories that OG readers never even imagined.
This is a list of elaborate fan theories about the Hunger Games franchise that were shared online. Take a gander down below and be sure to vote up the theories that make the most sense!
1,952 votes Great theory?President Snow isn’t an idiot, he knows that his method of ruling is bound to cause a rebellion eventually, especially with District 13 lying in wait.
Now as any dictator can tell you, you the only people you need to keep happy are the ones you’re afraid of. But how does Snow decide who to fear? Easy. Every year, he rounds up a smattering of kids from each district, and drops them into a controlled environment so that the Capitol military can see exactly which districts are a threat. Who is giving their children combat training? Survival training? How would the average members of each district population fare in battle? It would be incredibly easy to get this vital information just by watching the games.
Districts 1 and 2 don’t dominate the games because they’re treated well, they’re treated well because they dominate the games . Snow realizes he needs to keep them happy, because he constantly watches their fighters kick everyone’s ass.
They use the reaping to gather a (mostly) random sampling. Giving extra food for entering your name multiple times ensures that they can see the skills of the truly desperate (those most likely to join a rebel militia) and allowing volunteers lets them see how the glory hounds and tough guys fare (those most likely to lead a rebel militia).
From there, they offer training to see how quickly the average fighters from each district would adapt to combat training. How educated are they? How fast do they learn? Are weapons new to them, or do they have experience? They even test media savvy and ability to rally Capitol citizens to their cause with Caesar Flickerman’s show.
When they’re actually in the arena, not only is the Capitol assessing the fighters performance in different environments (why do you think they keep changing the map?), but they’re also testing counterinsurgency weapons. That’s why there’s always new environmental hazards every year. They’re seeing how effective they are against armed, twitchy revolutionaries. Fireballs? 86 them, they didn’t hurt anybody. Mutant animals that remind the fighters of fallen allies? Keep those, they were good. That’s why we see all those traps in the Capitol. They were the ones most effective against the tributes, so they were recycled into city defense systems.
1,583 votes Great theory?So I was rereading the books and rewatching the movies due to this whole quarantine thing. Personally, Catching Fire has always been my favorite book and movie so this got me thinking.
Was the arena in the 75th Hunger Games designed for Finnick?
This may sound like a bit of a stretch but here me out, I think this has some credibility. Plutarch obviously knew that if he wanted to get Katniss out of that arena alive, she would need protection from other tributes, which is why we see many of the tributes joining her “alliance.” Plutarch most likely knew that Katniss would immediately go to the Cornucopia and attempt to grab a bow. Knowing this, Plutarch wanted to eliminate the chance of Katniss getting killed during the bloodbath at the cornucopia. To combat this, he redesigned the Cornucopia to be in the middle of the water, where he KNEW Finnick would be the first or second tribute to get there due to his background from District 4.
Plutarch most likely knew that Finnick would be able to fight off any other tribute if they went after Katniss during the bloodbath, as we see when he throws his trident into the chest of (I think) the District 5 Male at the beginning of the Games.
Knowing all of this, Plutarch decided that the best chance of Katniss getting out of the bloodbath alive, would be to have Finnick be there for her protection. Knowing this, it is very possible that Finnick and possibly the other tributes in on the rebel plan knew what the arena was, and already had a plan set in place. It is very plausible that Finnick knew he would be first or second to the Cornucopia, and knew that his job was to get Katniss out of there alive.
There is actually a deleted scene from the Catching Fire movie, someone also brought this up in the replies. It shows Plutarch burning the original envelope for the 75th games and replacing it with his own.
[Also] On page 324 of Catching Fire , Katniss and Finnick are the first two to the Cornucopia. Finnick asks Katniss “Do you like the arena?” And Katniss replies with “Not particularly. But you should. They must have built it especially for you.”
So we learned a lot of new things about Panem from [ The Ballad of Songs and Snakes .] One detail that stuck out to me was that even in the very early Hunger Games, certain districts were already considered to be better than others. Snow seems to consider District 1 and 2 to be the best of the best, though he also gives an honorable mention to District 4 and. District 11?! One of these things is not like the others.
We know that 1, 2, and 4 will later go on to be labeled "career" districts because they have greater resources and excel at preparing their children for the Hunger Games. But District 11 is very much not part of that group by the time the 74th Games roll around. In fact, 11 sounds like was on the opposite end of the spectrum throughout the original trilogy. District 11 is so damn poor that it shocks even Katniss, who lives in what is supposedly the MOST impoverished and underperforming district (District 12). Definitely not the ideal environment for churning out victors.
So what gives? How did District 11 go from giving the careers a run for their money before the 10th Games to barely being able to feed themselves by the 74th? We can only guess, but Katniss may have given us a clue.
Based on her description of it, District 11 isn't just shockingly poor by her standards, but shockingly oppressed as well. They suffer harsher punishments, a larger number of Peacekeepers, and a more fortified fence than what District 12 has to deal with. Unfortunately for 11, this might be the worst possible environment to conduct career training in. Katniss confirms on several occasions that training for the Hunger Games is against the law. Obviously it still happens anyways and everyone in Panem knows it, including the Capitol. So it's implied that districts are only able to train careers if they are in good enough standing with the Capitol for it to turn a blind eye to their crimes. It's doubtful that the over-policed District 11 that Katniss visited in Catching Fire would be allowed to get away with that.
And that may very well be our explanation right there. What if District 11's absurd police presence hadn't always been there? What if they used to be permitted to train their tributes but somehow lost that privilege over time? After all, it would hypothetically only take one failed mini-uprising for 11 to lose favor with the Capitol and doom themselves to become one of the poorest and over-militarized districts in the nation. Considering the fact that District 11 rises up against (and then successfully breaks free from) the Capitol before any other district, it's even more plausible that its citizens have attempted their own uprising in recent memory.
TL;DR: District 11 was on track to become a wealthy career district but they had a failed independent uprising sometime between the 10th and 74th Hunger Games that pissed off the Capitol and ruined it for them.
