Breaking Bad, The Office (both versions), Supernatural, The Andy Griffith Show, Firefly, the old ‘60s Batman, and so much more, might all exist in the same fictional universe.

The Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis is a theory that has existed and grown over decades. The basic concept boils down to the idea that a huge number television shows belong to a single connected universe, and that universe exists in the mind of a child, Tommy Westphall.

It’s easy to look at the small list from the start and not believe it could be possible. Supernatural follows brothers killing monsters, while Firefly has a crew out in space in the distant future, and The Office is about the most mundane world imaginable.

So, how does this theory connect all these disparate worlds? Well, it all starts with one series, St. Elsewhere.

St. Elsewhere

St. Elsewhere is a medical drama that ran for six seasons between October 1982 and May 1988. It takes place in St. Eligius, a teaching hospital in Boston that was looked at by most as a last resort. This series was one of the originals to try make television be gritty and realistic, and even serialized to some extent. Though, this is all by 1980s standards more so than todays.

Tommy Westphall is the child of Dr. Donald Westphall on the series. Tommy is on the autism spectrum, and his first episode revolves around his father needing to find someone to help look after him. He doesn’t play a major role in the series during its run, only appearing in 15 of the 137 episodes, but in the final scene he becomes incredibly important to its legacy.

The final scene of St. Elsewhere’s series finale (“The Last One”) takes us from the hospital, to a small apartment. Tommy is on the floor, playing with a snow globe. His father walks in after a long day at work, but he’s not a doctor here. He seems to be a construction worker of some kind. Dr. Daniel Auschlander is there too, another prominent doctor from the hospital, but in this scene, he is Tommy’s grandfather.

Donald wishes he understood his son and wonders out loud what Tommy thinks about while staring into this snow globe all day. The snow globe is placed down on a television as the three of them head to the kitchen. The camera zooms in on the snow globe, and St. Eligius is inside.

The common understanding of this scene is that the entire series was imagined by Tommy as he stared into the globe. Often when people joke about the idea that show might end on the reveal that the series was just a dream, it is in reference back to this scene.

Alright, so, with this we can say that this one series potentially exists inside of Tommy’s mind, but how do the other shows come into play?

Direct Connections

St. Elsewhere didn’t exist in a bubble. Like most shows, there is some degree of crossover between it and various series. Some of these series ran along side of it, some of them ended before it even began, but most simply call back to it, well after St. Elsewhere comes to an end.

Here is where the Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis really kicks in. The concept is simple: if St. Elsewhere is all in the mind of Tommy, then every show connected to it could also be just in his mind. So, taking that into consideration, what all has Tommy dreamed up?

Here is a list of series that St. Elsewhere crossed over with, within its own episodes:

The Bob Newhart Show (1972 – 1978): Elliot Carlin, a character from The Bob Newhart Show, visits St. Eligius’s psych ward in the episode “Close Encounters”

M*A*S*H (1972 – 1983): Dr. Mark Craig mentions M*A*S*H’s Dr. B.J. Hunnicut in the episode “Santa Claus is Dead”.

The White Shadow (1978 – 1981): The character of Warren Coolidge originated from The White Shadow, and then appears in 23 episodes of St. Elsewhere.

Cheers (1982 – 1993): Three of the series’ doctors visit the bar from Cheers, in the episode “Cheers”.

And here is a list of series that can be argued to have direct connections with St. Elsewhere from their respective series:

Degrassi Junior High (1987 – 1991): St. Elsewhere’s Dr. Donald Westphall is paged twice over intercoms in a hospital. First in the episode “Nothing to Fear”, as just Dr. Westphall, and then in “Sealed with a Kiss”, the whole name Dr. Donald Westphall can be heard.

Tattinger’s (1988 – 1989): In the episode “The Sonny Also Rises”, Kenny Axelford mentions being the cousin to St. Elsewhere’s Dr. Elliot Axelford.

Homicide: Life on the Street (1993 – 1999): Dr. Roxanne Turner, a character originally from St. Elsewhere, is investigated for murder in the episode “Mercy”.

Chicago Hope (1994 – 2000): Kate Austin wins a fictional award, the Cushing Left Anterior Descending Artery Award, in the episode “Women on the Verge”. This award was also won by St. Elsewhere’s Dr. Mark Craig in the St Elsewhere episode “Samuels and the Kid”.

Oz (1997 – 2003): The same management company that that runs St. Eligius in St. Elsewhere, takes over the hospital in Oz.

Providence (1999 – 2002): In the series finale, Dr. Sydney Hansen is given the suggestion to work at St. Elsewhere’s St. Eligius Hospital.

Boston Public (2000 – 2004): Billy Deegan’s mother receives her pension from St. Elsewhere’s St. Eligius Hospital.

Homicide-Life-on-The-Street-Yaphet-Kotto-as-Lt.-Al-Giardello-1-1024x683.jpg

Method & Red (2004): Warren Coolidge, from both The White Shadow and St. Elsewhere, appears in the episode “Da Shootout”.

There is a lot of variation in the strength to these connections, especially in the list of shows alluding back to St. Elsewhere. But even the weakest of them give enough evidence to at least begin the theory.

You might be noticing right now that these are only twelve shows, not nearly the all-encompassing universe that was promise at the beginning. It doesn’t even include a single series mentioned at the top of the article! Well, this is where things get more complicated…

Extending the Web

If we look at the logic set up in the previous section, that any show with a connection to St. Elsewhere must also be a part of Tommy’s creation, that same line of thought can be expanded on.

Basically:

1: Show A (St. Elsewhere) is a dream.

2: If show B is connected to A, it is a part of the same dream.

3: Therefore, if show C is connected to B, it is also a part of the same dream.

And from here we have a loop that can go on forever.

So, with that in mind, let’s see how, say, Firefly fits in.

St. Elsewhere doctors visit the bar from Cheers. Cheers’ Frasier Crane then spun-off into Frasier. In Frasier the title character’s radio show is called into by John Hemmingway from The John Larroquette Show. The John Larroquette Show references Yoyodyne, a client of Wolfram & Hart in Angel. Another Wolfram & Hart client is Weyland-Utani, which is a company that makes some of the weapons in Firefly (and is also a major deal in the Alien movies).

Or how about the way The Office (US) fits in.

St. Elsewhere’s Dr. Turner is investigated in Homicide: Life on the Street. John Munch from Homicide: Life on the Street appears in an episode of The X-Files to question The Lone Gunmen. A mugshot of a Malcolm T. Wiggins, a character from The X-Files (as well as a fictional car rental company, Lariat, from the same show), appears in Veronica Mars. Veronica’s fortune cookie in an episode of Veronica Mars contains the numbers that appear constantly in Lost (4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42). Charlie from Lost once dated a woman whose father worked in the paper factory in Slough from The Office (UK). David Brent from The Office (UK) appears in an episode of The Office (US).

There is even a direct line from St. Elsewhere, to Homicide: Life on the Street, to Law & Order, to Arrow. And after last years insane “Crisis on Infinite Earths” crossover between all of CW’s DC Comics based shows, every single live action adaptation of DC superheroes are all connected to their single multiverse, including the movies. Hell, with Kevin Conroy playing a live-action Batman in part of the crossover, there is an argument to be made for a lot of the animated DC properties fitting in too.

This is not about to become a breakdown of absolutely every series that connects to the universe. This is just a kind of snapshot at how these connections start to be used to take the universe from just the twelve shows that connect to St. Elsewhere, to most shows that have ever aired.

The most comprehensive version of that (that I found) is The Master List. If you’re curious you should definitely check out.

An Argument Against

But what if the logic of it all being inside of Tommy’s head doesn’t hold up? There are a couple really strong arguments that say it doesn’t, including the way dreams actually work.

(For this section I’m going to be essentially paraphrasing the final third of Brian Weatherson’s post on the subject, he is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan. If you want to check out his full take, you can find it here)

When you have a dream about a work of fiction, that doesn’t mean that your mind necessarily made it up. For example, if you have a dream that includes elements from The Dark Knight, that doesn’t mean the movie only exists in your dream, but it might mean you fell asleep while watching it. The same goes for real people. If you dream about hanging out with Chris Evans, while what happens in your dream probably only happened in your dream, Chris Evans continues to be a person in the real world.

So, when Tommy dreams up the idea of his father and two other men visiting the bar from Cheers, does that mean Cheers is entirely a place of his own creation, or could it simply mean he saw it once and then dreamed about it?

The concept of the Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis hinges on the logic that if anything connects to St. Elsewhere, it must be a part of Tommy’s imagination. If you deny this idea, then the entire thing falls apart… or does it?

In the end, while the name “The Tommy Westphall Universe” is a direct reference to the concept of all these shows existing inside of the mind of Tommy, is that the most important take away? Even if we deny that everything exists in his head, these crossovers still exist, connections can still be drawn. All that might be lost is the idea that it is entirely in Tommy’s mind, but the rest of it still holds.

Conclusions

Over the decades since St. Elsewhere ran its series finale, the connections between it and other series across television has grown larger and larger. Whole communities of people online share information as they notice new possibilities for how this web of a universe builds out and adds more shows, which in turn adds even more shows.

The idea that every one of these shows all exist in the mind of Tommy Westphall is one that, while cool, could almost be taken as clickbait. There are arguments for it, but there are at least as many arguments again. The universe doesn’t exactly lose anything if you don’t accept this point, but the number of titles that cite that “every show you watch is in the mind of an autistic child” might be pushing it.

It’s incredibly interesting to see how these fictional worlds all intersect in a way very similar to a concept like “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”. While this doesn’t mean that we’ll ever get to see Mal Reynolds visit the Scranton branch of Dunder Mifflin, It’s exciting to see the ways in which their respective shows aren’t as disparate as they appear.