Friends/WMG

Monica has a history of eating disorders.

In the episode The One With All The Thanksgivings, it is revealed that Monica lost copious amounts of weight in a single year because Chandler said she was fat. She has been described on the show as having an unhealthy relationship with food ("It's just food, it's not love"), and she had been a compulsive eater prior to making the effort to lose weight. For these reasons, it is not unreasonable to suggest that the sudden drop in weight came as a result of another eating disorder - probably bulimia since she was already established as a compulsive eater, and another flashback episode set later that year indicates that she's trying to lose weight, has lost 'four pounds' and is willing to sit down and eat an entire pizza by herself. Although there is no reference in canon to her sudden weight loss being anything but a good thing, it seems evident that compulsive eaters do not suddenly lose a lot of weight after a blow to their self-esteem in a completely healthy fashion.

• That's so evil...
• Sadly, that seems quite credible. She has the kind of personality classically associated with eating disorders, being highly-strung, sensitive and obsessive with strong needs for control and approval; she was also in one of the highest-risk groups for eating disorders (high-achieving, upper-middle-class white teenage girls) at the time of her weight loss.
• Also, former anorexics frequently find it hard - if not impossible - to have children later. It's one of the side-effects of having starved yourself for a long period of time, as your body shuts down all non-essential functions. So that would explain why she and Chandler couldn't have kids together.
• To be fair, being overweight also puts a person at a higher risk of infertility. And anorexia doesn't necessarily (witness Victoria Beckham). Also, if she does have such a history, she was probably raped as a child. Think about that for a moment. Makes sense, no? Maybe a subersion of Driven to Suicide. Bet the show doesn't seem so funny anymore, right? Further - she lives with people who clearly make no mention of any psychological disturbances. Either she's just a good dieter, or her friends are pretty horrible to not care about her.
  • If you're thinking what I think you're thinking, it could turn her relationship with Richard (and the jokes around it) into a very dark Funny Aneurysm Moment.
• Wouldn't a side effect of that be rancid breath? Something nobody ever mentions? And rotting teeth? Monica probably just funneled her compulsive eating into compulsive neatness, keeping her neurosis but in a less dangerous form.
  • Those symptoms are far too textbook. For starters, the WMG above says that she has a history of eating disorders, not that she currently has one.
    • Ross and Rachel still would have been around to notice the past side effects of any eating disorders. And rotting teeth don't just disappear.
• On the other hand, people who live in emotionally abuse homes as children are often overweight, particularly in adolescence, and then lose the weight once they move out of the house and away from the abusers. Since Monica didn't seem to have her weight yo-yo, but lost it all at once, when she was about 18 (she says it had to do with Chandler, but that doesn't have to be true, however, the fact that she lost it once and kept it off is an observable fact), didn't regain it, and clearly has self-esteem issues with her mother, who makes no secret of the fact that Ross is her favorite, this theory makes as much sense as the "eating disorder" theory.
  • Also, the reason for her difficulty conceiving was explained. She had an unusually high pH count in her uterus, which is "hostile" to establishing a pregnancy. This has nothing to do with eating disorders. On top of that, Chandler had slow swimmers. There actually are treatments for both those things, but they are very expensive. In an earlier episode, it was mentioned that her mother had trouble conceiving, so she may have inherited the problem.
    • I feel better now.

Rachel has a foot fetish.

When Rachel and Monica are teaching Chandler how to satisfy a woman sexually, she mentions toes "for some people". In another episode, Ross, who used to date Rachel, mentions that a dessert she prepared tastes like feet. How does he know what feet taste like? Yeah...

• Also, at one point, Rachel expresses a desire for a lover who could "Make (her) toes curl". And she wears stilettos and other fetishised footwear more often than Monica or Phoebe, though that could just be a side-effect of her being the "fashionable one".
  • (It's also because Jennifer Aniston is the short one, but go on, this is interesting.)
• She also mentioned, during the episode where they're at the beach with nothing to do, that she painted Ross's toenails when they were dating.
  • Also, Fridge Logic - how did Paolo know her exact shoe size when he bought her shoes when he was in Rome?

Joey is gay.

Think about it:

• He has many one-night stands - or so we are told. Very few of these women appear onscreen.
  • True, but Chandler's clearly met plenty of them. At one point he refers to talking to some of them in the mornings after.
• He gets absurdly excited at seeing the women in Baywatch even though he's supposedly scoring every night. Over-compensating?
  • The ability to score with multiple women does not hinder ones ability to enjoy boobies.
• He's an actor.
  • What does that have to do with anything?
    • The high number of openly gay actors in the theatre community would only indicate that he probably is straight (or at least bi) since he'd have no reason to lie about his sexuality among co-stars, let alone hook up with the female ones as cover.
• His attachment to childish habits, indicating repressed sexuality.
  • What?
• He comes from an Italian Catholic family, the only son in a family with many daughters; he would have been under heavy pressure to adopt a macho persona.
  • Or he just learned to appreciate women
• His relationships with women are brief and awkward, particularly with Rachel.
  • Phoebe thinks he's gay, too. When Rachel asks her why didn't they tell her that she still loves Ross, she says:

"Well, because we thought you knew!! It's so obvious! God, that would be like telling Monica, 'Hey, you like things clean.' Or, y'know, 'Hey, Joey, you're gay!'"

• • • Yes, but this is Phoebe who thinks this.
    • Waitwaitwaitwaitwaitwait hold the PHONE. I remember that line up to the bit about Monica, but I don't remember the latter. I'm looking at the ceiling to try to spot the joke flying over my head, but I'm not seeing it. Explain plz.
    • You might have seen a run of the episode that was Edited for Syndication. If you meant the joke was adding that part of the line, it was not (I remember the entire line, too, except that it was Chandler she was talking about). If you mean the joke of the line itself, it's playing on the Ambiguously Gay attributes of Chandler (or, if I'm wrong, Joey), and Phoebe being The Ditz.
    • It's Joey, see the transcript.
    • I have Friends on DVD, and that line is definitely not there. On the other hand, it wouldn't be the first time a show had two copies of an episode in existence with slight differences in editing.
    • That line was not in the original airing and is only in uncut DVDs. Not all of the DVDs sold are uncut. There, settled?
• Joey, stop being so defensive about being gay.
  • What? Why's everybody pointing at me? What about Chandler?
• alternately, Joey is bisexual, which he realizes at some point during the series and just keeps to himself. He would have made a pass at Chandler but Chandler hooked up with Monica before he got up the nerve and loved Chandler and Monica too much to do anything to ruin it. In a later episode he even acts offended when Chandler strongly denies that they are a couple asking if Chandler thinks he's too good for Joey.

The six of them are in a mental asylum together

It would explain so much. The apartments that would cost a billion dollars a month in rent. The coffee shop always catering to their every whim. Retconned pasts. 'Dating' each other. And every time one of them manages to make a life for themselves outside of the circle (Ross and the English woman), something extraordinary dumb happens to screw it up. Ross LIKES being in the Happy Home with the drugs at seven. However...the PARENTS are real. Sort of. Chandler can't tell the difference between his mom and his dad. Monica hates hers and tries to get 'revenge' by claiming silly stuff. "Oh dear, now she's claiming she slept with her pediatrician." Rachel's parents, of course, drove her into the asylum with her wanting to marry an idiot. Phoebe's mom committed suicide, and she just can't get over it.

• "So no one told you life was going to be this way..." - OMG subteckst!
  • More likely that Rachel went insane after Barry jilted her, and so she rewrote the memory. Joey was abused over a long period by a man who always asked him "How you doin'?" (his tailor) Monica's bulimia caused brain damage.
    • Or, alternatively, Monica is hospitalized for OCD. Phoebe probably has schizophrenia or something similar (due to her thinking she's psychic and some of her kookier ideas).
    • Their love interests are mental projections of their subconscious minds. Janice represents Chandler's messed-up ideas about women stemming from his own parents' divorce. Joey's constant string of rarely-seen one-night stands is him overcompensating for his latent homosexuality. Barry represents Rachel's fear of emotional intimacy, whereas Emma is a projection of her own self-centeredness (Rachel wants to be Emma). Carol and Emily represent Ross's paranoia and fear of abandonment. Monica's early string of men who use her represent her own insecurity issues from growing up overweight, while her marriage to the somewhat effeminate Chandler symbolizes her own homosexuality and obsessive need to control others. And Phoebe? Suicided mother who wasn't really her mother, absentee father, evil twin sister, having her brother's triplets, staunch vegetarian. She killed and ate her own family, and her mind is now completely detached from reality.
      • Phoebe Evil Twin might be a alternate personality, but a inactive one.
• And...and...and...forget surrogates! She's her kids' auntie AND mom! EEEWWW!
  • No, she's not! "I'm just the oven; it's totally their bun."

Chandler and Joey really did lose Ben

They ended up getting the wrong baby after they forgot Ben inside the bus, and the baby just happened to cry because of Monica. Ross in fact couldn't tell the difference between his baby and the other baby due to...Oh c'mon BABIES LOOK THE SAME.

• I'd understand Ross not being able to tell the difference, but Carol and Susan would've lynched him had he returned with the wrong kid. I jolly well hope they can recognize Ben in a line-up.

:Chandler and Monica are into dom-sub play

Monica is dom, Chandler is sub. She's incredibly bossy and controlling, he's a spineless wimp, so it makes perfect sense for them to be together if they complement each other's fetishes.

• This is referenced in one episode. Chandler finds a pair of handcuffs in the spare bedroom and freaks out, because they don't do the whole bondage thing and he starts wondering who Monica did use them with (Richard?) and why she doesn't use them with him.
  • At one point, Joey remarks about Chandler being lazy because he's never on top during sex. Think about it...
• Not to mention the fact that in the season four episode The One With The Cuffs, Chandler is involved in a dom-sub relationship with Rachel's boss - it doesn't get much more explicit than, "She's not just the boss in your office", but the driving force of the episode is the fact that Chandler is handcuffed to a chair in the office when she is called away, and she's unable to come back to free him for hours. Clearly, being the sub is something that Chandler enjoys...
  • Letting himself be handcuffed once doesn't equate to being the sub in a Dom-sub relationship though.
• If this were true, it's far more likely that Monica would play the sub role, and Chandler the dom. Role-play subs are generally very strong characters IRL
  • Often, yes. Generally, no. Admittedly, I'm a dom and like Chandler in that I'm not a particularly forceful person (albeit more out of generally being cool with anything and rarely bothered enough to protest), but still.
  • This Troper's understanding is that doms and subs generally take those roles in play to express aspects of themselves they can't act out in real life. So Monica would submit to chandler.
• There's also the episode The One With the Routine where Phoebe and Rachel rope Chandler into trying to find the Christmas gifts Monica had hidden. There's a running gag about Chandler "storing stuff" for Joey in his closet, but it's never actually mentioned what exactly he's storing. But I think we can all take a few guesses.

:The guy who told Rachel off on the flight to London really was Dr. House.

We know that House can fake a passable English accent (from The Socratic Method, 1-06), that he has no qualms about calling people on hypocrisy (often, normally to Cuddy or Foreman) and that he's a complete dick (from...just about every episode made), and he's very high-profile, so it's not inconceivable that he could be on his own way to London for a conference or something similar.

• Yeah, but why would he shave?
  • This was before he was nearly lost his leg. He wasn't nearly as bitter or cynical. And we all know that you can't be bitter or cynical without a five-o'clock shadow!
    • This is my personal cannon now.
    • A stubble cannon sounds awesome.
    • I don't think men would like getting shot in the face.
      • Hugh Laurie(House) is actually British.
        • Yes, but the character House isn't, hence the OP pointing out that the character can fake an English accent.

:Monica has trouble conceiving after marrying Chandler because she ate so much Mockolate in The One With The List

She eats quite a bit of mockolate - more than Phoebe or Rachel - during the show, and at the end is asked (with concern) if she ate "a lot" of it, because the FDA didn't approve it because of "something to do with laboratory rats". She is also asked if she suffers a burning sensation when she urinates, which indicates that whatever the problem is with mockolate, it has something to do with her urinary tract and/or her reproductive system.

The people in the episode where Ross looked like a jerk to his new neighbors were trying to rip him off.

The maintenance guy's retirement gift would have only been about $80-$200, so not only was it not Ross's fair share by not having reaped the benefits of him having worked there beyond the condition of his apartment when he first moved in, it wasn't his fair share mathematically.

• • The gift was going to be a hundred dollars from everybody in the building, cash.

Phoebe has unrealized/underdeveloped psychic powers.

This is how she was able to tell that Joey had eaten meat, and Monica and Chandler had sex in London. She is also able to hear Joey singing "Baby Elephant Walk" in his head when they're at Central Perk one day.

• Phoebe knows she's psychic, she's said so before. Also likely precognitive as she predicts several future plot developments in a single conversation, with the unfulfilled ones still a possibility. Which means she is going to kill Ross in the future.

Friends takes place in the Heroes universe

Phoebe dated (and later married) Mike in the last two seasons. Mike himself is a half-Petrelli --rich yuppie, and son of Angela Petrelli but from a different father. The core cast also has subversive powers that very subtly warp reality in their favor, but they're considered too weaksauce for either the Company, the government, Samuel, or Sylar to care about.

• Hrm, the son of Angela Petrelli and Charles Logan?

The entire show takes place in an Alternate Universe New York City.

• Think about it: There are few minorities around the city.....people who barely have employment live in apartments that would cost MANY THOUSANDS of dollars monthly to rent and keep up...obvious retconning goes on frequently and yet none of the major characters notice...and a close knit of group of equally numbered males and females has no issues w/ non-paired group members making clumsy (or successful) attempts at seduction.

How would this be possible in this universe? Therefor Friends documents events that occur in an alternate universe.

• The Friends characters already live in an alternate universe; on in which the World Trade Center attacks didn't happen. The writers didn't know how to deal with it in a comedy series so chose to ignore them.
• Untrue. Shortly after the attacks, when new episodes resumed airing, the Magne-Doodle board in Joey's and Chandler's apartment commemorated the attacks.

Janice is (another) illegitimate daughter of Joseph Joestar.

• Who else says "Oh my God" in Punctuated! For! Emphasis! style?

The bump on Ben's head activated powers of precognition

• And he's not saying "Monica bang!" afterwards, that's just what they hear. He's actually saying Monica Bing, forseeing her eventual marriage to Chandler.

The Billy Crystal and Robin Williams characters in "The One With The Ultimate Fighting Champion" are actors/performance artists.

• They visit public places like coffee shops, bars, stores, etc., situate themselves near a large group of people, and repeat the shtick we saw in that episode. They always have a more-or-less captive audience, since onlookers have no way of knowing that it's all an act.

Phoebe and Joey were supposed to get together at some point

• There are several instances of Ship Teasing between Joey and Phoebe: Joey giving Phoebe 'the perfect kiss', Phoebe saying that she and Joey would get together as part of her plan, Joey refusing to watch a porno which Phoebe apparently stars in, and the episode where they drive Phoebe's taxi back to New York, just for starters. The writers were probably intending to hook them up at some point, but fan reaction was less than superb for whatever reason so they dropped it in favour of Mike.
  • Actually, the Other Wiki says that the creators said that they always assumed that Phoebe and Joey had a secret affair.

Joey has a crush on Phoebe

• Much like the previous entry, with much of the same evidence. He never acts on it because he's initially worried that she'll reject him because of his womanising ways, and later because she's so happy dating David, then Mike.

Phoebe is a closet bisexual.

Now, I know all of the main six have had Ho Yay with each other, but Phoebe outright fantasizes about Monica's cousin (I forget her name) and kisses Rachel "to see what all the fuss was about". And she's practically an Ethical Slut anyway, so is probably more open minded about such things than the others...I dunno. Just a thought.

Phoebe has Aspergers Syndrome.

She's very self centred, and she doesn't understand social norms as much as the rest of the group. Whenever someone pays her a compliment, most would reply with some form of thanks, Phoebe instead replies that she already knows. She also butts in on Monica and Rachel's hugs for the sake of it, even when she isn't involved.

She also uses her mother's death to get her own way over the most trivial things; I think it's Monica or Rachel who once mentions that Phoebe used her mother's death as an excuse to get the last muffin. Such a traumatic moment of her life shouldn't be treated so lightly, if Phoebe had Aspergers it would explain how she's able to be so flippant about it, she simply doesn't experience the same emotional link to it that others would.

It would also cover her more eccentric behaviour, not to mention how callous she is to Chandler right in front of him; granted Rachel does the same thing, but she does it behind his back. Another example is when she finds Monica's "soul mate", she just doesn't understand why Chandler's upset.

• • No. She doesn't. If you work with people with autism and Asperger's, you would know that she clearly doesn't. She may be improperly socialized from having atypical peer groups, though. At one point, her mother worked on barges, and she stayed on the barges, or docks with her mother, and very few child peers, other than her twin, with whom she doesn't get along. Then through various parental traumas, she was tossed around to her grandmother, or living on the streets. She was never in one place very long. She probably had really poor childhood nutrition. Some people with backgrounds like that are very low-functioning, but don't technically have anything wrong with them.
    • Ursula, on the other hand, does behave like there really is something wrong with her, but not Asperger's. She acts like she's had a serious head injury, at some point. She has real problems with her memory. I think she fell off the barge.

Judy at one time suffered a miscarriage.

In one episode Jack mentions that he got engaged to Judy because she had gotten pregnant and in another he mentions that Ross was a medical marvel because they thought Judy couldn't have kids. This could have been because of complications from a miscarriage from her first pregnancy. Fridge Horror abounds for this one.

• • Although Ross says "they thought she was barren". This would indicate she was unable to conceive at all, it is different from having the type of body which regularly aborts foetuses.
    • I was saying that complications in the first pregnancy (which I believe was when she had a miscarriage) left her barren (or so they believed).

Monica and Chandler do eventually have their own child naturally.

To mirror Monica's issue with her parents' favoritism of Ross, and because of her mom's suspected infertility. And Monica will either follow in her parents' footsteps by favoring their miracle baby, or end up favoring the twins because she would want them to feel loved, even if they were adopted, in an attempt to prevent them from being in Monica's shoes. Ironically, this would leave at least one kid to end up like Monica.

[[WMG: The One Where Everyone Found Out was planned by Monica In particular, to get Chandler to publicly admit that he loves her. All of the I Know You Know I Know that started with Joey began with her deliberately having him catch her and Chandler together, and it panned out from there. And come on, she does seem a little too eager for Chandler to seduce another woman with her watching.

• • She's really competitive. Freakishly so.

The "Something" being tried by Ross

In an "The One Where Nana Dies Twice" the friends are looking at old photos of Ross and Monica. Joey exclaims "I got Monica naked!", but Ross explains that it is him, "trying something". In the episode "The One With Phoebe's Birthday Dinner" Ross's mother tells a story to Rachel that Ross tucked his willy between his legs when he as younger. I suggest that the photo was in fact of this act (which was what I always suspected it had been).

Phoebe has a middle name beginning with the letter C.

She chose the name Princess Consuela Banana Hammock to have the same initials as Phoebe C. Buffay-Hannigan.