The internet is a wild place, and even a children’s TV series about a cartoon pig isn’t safe from crazy fan theories, as we take a look at a horrifying backstory to Peppa Pig. The animated series has become a worldwide phenomenon since it first aired in 2004, but this shocking fan-fiction may make you think twice before letting your kids watch Peppa Pig.
The long-running adventures of the anthropomorphic piglet, created by Neville Astley and Mark Baker, have spawned 368 episodes thus far – enough to last you a whole year if you ration them carefully! The show is currently set to run until 2027, but we wouldn’t bet on the terrifying origin story we are about to share with you being realised on-screen any time soon.
On the surface, Peppa Pig appears to be a wholesome story of a sweet little pig and her mum, dad, and little brother, as they navigate life in their small community and carry out various activities with their fellow animal friends. But how can these animals talk? And where did they all come from? Be warned, the following story contains very graphic detail and dark themes!
There’s an alternate backstory to Peppa Pig, created by fan-fiction writer Yuki Sazuki, that suggests Peppa and the other characters are based on real-life dead people. Sazuki posted his dark theory on Wattpad, claiming that a producer on the show handed them a secret file when they visited the set as a child.
“Peppa was never a healthy child. She was usually ill and spent her short life in a hospital bed,” Sazuki explained. “One night, Peppa’s parents decided it would be best if they euthanised her. So that night, Peppa fell asleep and she was injected with a poison, thus killing her.”
It gets even darker, when you learn the subsequent story of Peppa’s parents and her little brother George. “Peppa’s parents could not live with the guilt of killing their child. After six months of George asking where his sister had gone, the dad snapped. He took a knife and killed himself, his wife, and child.”
According to Sazuki, all the other characters in the story met similarly brutal ends. Suzy Sheep was run over by a truck as a child, so her mother turned to crack cocaine before dying of a drug overdose. Mr Zebra was the one driving the truck, and he died alone as a homeless man on the street.
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If murder and drug abuse don’t pique your interest, how about some good old-fashioned tragedy? Sazuki posits that in his human life, Grandpa Dog was a keen sailor, and took his grandson Danny on a boating adventure. “When a storm broke out, lightning hit the boat which set the sail alight. Grandpa Dog was burned to death, while Danny drowned.”
Meanwhile, Mummy Dog met her maker in bizarre circumstances akin to the horror movie franchise Final Destination. “She was fixing the car wash when it malfunctioned and killed her,” Sazuki said. “This is why she is never seen at Grandpa Dog’s garage, and why Grandpa Dog doesn’t like taking Danny on his boat.”
It’s all rather sadistic, but it’s starting to make sense, isn’t it? This doesn’t quite explain the whole anthropomorphic angle, though, but luckily Grandma Pig is the answer to that. After Grandpa Pig was crushed to death by a treehouse, poor old Grandma was left a lonely, schizophrenic widow.
Pumped full of drugs and with her mental disorder taking over, Grandma Pig is “transported to a world where her loved ones are alive and well.” So you see, the animalistic purgatory all the characters find themselves in is basically a fantasy concocted by a grief-stricken old woman.
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Just to add fuel to the fire of this theory, I made a little discovery of my own, and believe it or not, Queen Elizabeth II is at the heart of the development. In season 6, episode 1 of Peppa Pig, Miss Rabbit and the school children meet the Queen, who is presented in human form.
Now, this could be a simple case of the show’s creators not wanting to anger the royal family by portraying her majesty as an animal, but it could also be a sign that Sazuki’s story has some legs. The Queen of England is still alive in real life, therefore she can’t be an animal in Peppa Pig’s world.
Of course, all of this should be taken with a massive pinch of salt. We very much doubt that the Peppa Pig creators actually based their show on the gruesome deaths of countless children, and we struggle to believe that a producer would just hand a secret file full of this information to a child.
For a more legitimate origin story, why not check out the true story of Freddy Krueger, which is genuinely less scary than what you’ve just read here.