'Wreck-It Ralph' and Simulation Theory: Are we characters in a Video Game?

'Wreck-It Ralph' (2012): The two-dimensional Game and Real Life in 3D

'Wreck-It Ralph' (2012): Reality outside the game and inside it

Wreck-it Ralph is a 3D animated movie about a Video Game Villain traversing different Game universes in order to save the "Arcade" and find his true calling as a hero. It proposes numerous layers of reality that are meta in nature not unlike 'Inception' (2010) did with dreams and 'The Matrix' (1999) offered with computer simulations.

Theoretical physicist Dr Sylvester James Gates Jr presents the notion that we may already be living in our own "Matrix". His research has led to finding "computer code" embedded into the equations of superstring theory:

VIDEO: Dr. Sylvester James Gates Jr. presents Evidence for Intelligent Design

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Are you saying that we're all just - that there's some entity that programmed the universe and we're just expressions of their code...
Dr. SYLVESTER JAMES GATES: Well I didn't say that
TYSON: ... like 'The Matrix'? Some of what you said!
GATES: Some of those codes are showing on the screen behind you right now. They don't look like code but these pictures which are called "Adinkras" are graphical interpretations of sets of equations based on codes.
To answer your question more directly, I have in my life come to a very strange place cuz I never expected that the movie 'The Matrix' might be an accurate representation of a place in which I live.

Ultimately what's "real" may be the connections made with others and the meaning we find in that. Does it really matter that we are living in a Video Game? That life is a dream or that we're simply simulating our past selves. Comedian Joe Rogan offers this optimistic view:

Joe Rogan and The Simulation Theory
JOE ROGAN: Life is just not just whatever you can knock on and make noise, life is not just solid things. Life is also intention, its energy... your car, your house, your boat, your f*cking private jet. Anything that you can hit with a hammer is an illusion. That's the illusion. The reality is the feel, the love, the life, the soul, the interaction with human beings...

Find other Dan Harmon and Duncan Trussell conversations here:

- Ousted 'Community' creator, Dan Harmon speaks to Duncan Trussell about "permanence"

- Dan Harmon and Duncan Trussell: We are in a simulation echo. God was originally a mortal programmer who "sacrificed himself as a player"

- 'Wreck-It Ralph' and Simulation Theory: Are we characters in a Video Game?

Towelie and Kevin Smith: Talking pot and the reward of epiphany

Rolling Stone (May 2011) - Kevin Smith's Happy Ending

Kevin Smith's Happy Ending by Josh Eells
"It's kind of like The Matrix" he says, with the zeal of a convert. "That moment when Neo sees all the zeros and ones. Suddenly, you see everything clearly: The negativity goes away. The doubt goes away. You get a little burner Tony Robbins in your head, going 'Come on, Kev, you can do it!' I hate to sound like a stoner- but there's a reason, like, it grows everywhere." 

When he first started getting high, Smith vowed that he'd always tie it to something creative, so as not to become a TV-watching slug. "You gotta be writing," he told himself. "You gotta be recording, you gotta be tweeting."

I'm not much of a smoker. When I had the epiphany of seeing the 1s and 0s of reality after being enlightened by a National Geographic doco after a few puffs, I got a glimpse of the appeal. When I mentioned my revelation to regular smoker, he was pleased to know I had seen the light.

There's definitely a nexus between creativity and stimulants like pot, some people try to control their usage by linking it to reward systems or artistic inspiration but I don't know maaaaaaan...

South Park (Season 10, Episode 5): A Million Little Fibers

South Park Ep 1005: A Million Little Fibers
TOWELIE: All right, I'm gonna get a little high. [sets up to light the joint, but stops himself again] No! No I'm NOT gonna get high! Every time I get high, I come up with ideas that get me in more trouble. I'm not gettin' high this time!
...
Aw, that's okay. This whole thing was my fault. I learned that I shouldn't get high to come up with ideas. I should come up with ideas and then get high, to reward myself. [whips out his joint and lighter]

Dan Harmon and Duncan Trussell: We are in a simulation echo. God was originally a mortal programmer who "sacrificed himself as a player"

Mind-blowing comedian Duncan Trussell and community creator Dan Harmon discuss the idea that we are in one big simulation echo:

Duncan Trussell Family Hour - Episode 33: Dan Harmon 

DUNCAN TRUSSELL: (20min mark) We're getting really good at simulating reality... In the next couple of years we're gonna figure out a way to map the neural structure of the human brain and simulate that within one of these games - well its not gonna be a game anymore at that point. It'll be a habit trail for disembodied parts of the consciousness that think they're real right?
So the idea is if that could happen with us... Then it probably already happened
DAN HARMON: (in unison) already happened
TRUSSELL: We're in it
HARMON: If it probably happened then it did happen. Because its an infinite universe and time doesn't exist except within the confines of one universe... then what you have is an infinite simulation of universes. I guess the question is, is there something outside of that?
TRUSSELL: Well no that's the original programmer. Then suddenly that's where you get to this thing where - I never understood the whole Jesus died on the cross for our sins... I never could understand what's the magic behind that. How does that work? Of course that's just an archetype for humans eating the God. That's in a lot of different religions. Then suddenly you have this thing where No, the person who died WAS God. The original programmer was mortal, that was a mortal being that figured out how to make the simulator and that poor sonofabitch died so we could be infinite in this f*cking thing

HARMON: Because God so loved us he gave his only begotten son - He loved the videogame so much he went into it and found out that the way for the game to last forever is to sacrifice himself as a player
TRUSSELL: He had to die cuz he was mortal. He wasn't a simulation. Whoever started the f*cking echo of the simulation. Whoever started the simulation, creating the simulations inside the simulations. That was a mortal.
The paradox of God is that God was mortal, the programmer died a long time ago. He's long gone but the echo of his creation goes on infinitely folding in on itself perpetually...

Find other Dan Harmon and Duncan Trussell conversations here:

- Ousted 'Community' creator, Dan Harmon speaks to Duncan Trussell about "permanence"

- Dan Harmon and Duncan Trussell: We are in a simulation echo. God was originally a mortal programmer who "sacrificed himself as a player"

- 'Wreck-It Ralph' and Simulation Theory: Are we characters in a Video Game?