Conspiracy theories start out as far-fetched concepts and ideas that very few people claim, and even then it feels like the people behind these ideas have one or two bolts loose.

But that’s not always the case. Sometimes what looks like a conspiracy has a chance of becoming real. Not because it’s some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, but rather because someone wasn’t really crazy after all.

Redditors have been sharing conspiracy theories that turned out to be as real as the moon landing or Bigfoot. The now-viral AskReddit post was so successful that it even got 17,000 upvotes with engagement from readers generating over 7,600 comments.

We’ve filtered out the best of the best responses from the Reddit post and meticulously crafted a curated list which you can vote, comment, and simply enjoy down below. And don’t forget to share some of your conspiracy theories turned reality in the comment section below!

More Info: Reddit

#1 Operation Snow White, A Criminal Conspiracy By The Church Of Scientology To Infiltrate The Government

Treestroyer said: Scientology’s invasion on the US government. Project Snow White.

ForgotMyNameAh replied: Scientology is scary. An untaxed/unregulated cult that has so much money and resources that have to buy buildings and leave them empty so it they don't have as many billions in their accounts. Hiding assets. Have turned at least one town into a ghost town by buying buildings for "offices" or something. Having no actual use, and leaving towns full of empty buildings.

They will spy on you by moving people in next door. They have so many lawyers, politicians, police, influential celebrities in their pocket.

I think the former face of scientology said they sent people to knock on every door in his neighborhood to "warn" them he's a pedophile.

The power, reach and money is terrifying.

Image credits: Treestroyer

#2 Apple Deliberately Slowed Down Their Phones

throwingplaydoh said:
Apple purposefully slowed down existing phones when they released a new model to get more sales.

cheif702 replied:
The craziest part is that other companies have been doing similar malicious things for decades. There was a massive agreement in the 40s by lightbulb companies to start making their light bulbs burn out faster, but pass the new designs as innovation. They did it because they had essentially made the best thing they could at the time with the technology they had, and people didn't need to keep buying lightbulbs. I think it's called planned obsolescence.

Image credits: throwingplaydoh

#3 Various Industries Were Silencing Scientists And Studies That Went Against Their Products

Oh-Oh-Ophelia said:
The tobacco industry silencing scientists and creating false studies to say smoking isn't harmful several decades ago.

jefftak7 replied:
Soda companies did the same thing with sugar.

Koupers replied:
The Automotive and Oil companies have been doing the same thing with Climate change since at least the 1970s.

Image credits: Oh-Oh-Ophelia

#4 This One Guy Taped His Laptop Camera Way Before Snowden's NSA Disclosure

I’m an engineer (semi related to the story), a guy I worked with years before the Snowden realization would tape over his laptop camera, disable mics, etc. He was thought to be a crazy tinfoil conspiracy guy. Turns out he worked on some small portions of black projects much earlier in his career and started doing this ever since those years.

Image credits: The-loon

#5 Toronto's Gay Community Had A Serial Killer That Local Law Enforcement Didn't Believe

People in Toronto's Gay Village thought there was a serial killer targeting the local gay population. They went to police and the concern was dismissed. Turns out it was a serial killer.

Image credits: Surax

#6 Multifaceted Silencing Of Britney Spears Via Conservatorship

camr0se4 said:
Britney Spears being silenced and abused for years

Hausgebrauch replied:
Yeah, I gotta admit that the #FreeBritney movement started out as the usual internet b******t, where fans with an unhealthy obsession overanalyzed every little thing and said in all seriousness things like: "Her dad hired a lookalike that is now posting videos on Instagram for her, so that we think she is happy!" or "She blinks in a certain way, that means, if you divide the number of blinks by seven, add her birthdate and use the Kellog's decoder ring from 1964 on it, she needs help!", but then the right people took a rational look at it and it turned out there really was something going on and now she actually is free again.

Image credits: camr0se4

#7 Johnson & Johnson's Awareness Of Asbestos In Their Products

How about when Johnson and Johnson knew that their talc powder had too much asbestos in it which can cause cancer and they kept selling it to be used on babies. They're still getting sued for mesothelioma and ovarian cancer (lots of women used it on their lady parts).

Image credits: cactusflower4

#8 Project MKUltra, An Illegal Human Experimentation Program

The CIA used military personnel with diagnoses of everything from depression to PTSD and even schizophrenia as guinea pigs for experimental medicines and treatments. They once gave a group of mentally ill men massive doses of LSD and left them all in a room for several days just to see what would happen. One survivor wrote that he spent those days perceiving the other men as living corpses and that the walls were covered in blood. There is no accurate number for how many people were killed or otherwise traumatized for life.

Project MKUltra began in 1953 and continued for 20 years, only finally being dismantled in 1973.

Image credits: MissReanimator

#9 Social Media Sites Selectively Censor Things They Don't Agree With

Amurp18 said:
Social media websites shadow-ban opinions they disagree with

Impressive-Hunt-2803 replied:
Facebook whistleblowers have come out admitting right-wing media and right-wing politicians are being allowed to post things that would get other people banned because they're popular and get a lot of interactions, which makes Facebook money.
The bans are heavily lopsided, as facebook algorithms and some key figures in facebooks management favour right-wing media.
Right-wingers *complain* about getting banned more, but the numbers don't add up, not according to any available data. Not according to any metric besides the feelings of fox news commentators. But because their feelings don't care about facts, it's easy to ignore.

Image credits: Amurp18

#10 The 100 Hall, A Hallway In A School Used As A Bomb Shelter

One you’ve never heard of. There were tales at my high school of “The 100 Hall”, where all the halls with numbered rooms and lockers started at 200 and went up, so there was no 100 hall. The wild story was that it’s underground, built to be a bomb shelter with stored non-perishables, and had entrances in the auditorium and gym.

Turns out, absolutely true. The one aspect of it that didn’t pan out was the attached tunnel that led to the science building at the local university.

Image credits: KaimeiJay

#11 The 1953 Iranian Coup D'état To Replace The Iranian Leader

The CIA overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran to install a Shah, who was more friendly to the US in the 1950s.

Image credits: Vernerator

#12 Oil And Automotive Companies Against Green Energy And Other Anti-Climate Change Efforts

Wazula42 said:
Oil and car companies suppressing green energy, buying and dismantling public transit, and burying grim climate data

alonelygrapefruit replied:
I have a personal conspiracy theory for ya. The oil and gas industry is paying moderators of big subreddits to allow propaganda posts they write about carbon footprints and personal climate responsibility to stay on the front page. I've seen so many suspicious highly upvoted posts about how to reduce your carbon footprint and about how individual consumers are the problem. We know that the idea of a carbon footprint was invented by the oil and gas industry to shift blame from them on to the average consumer, so I'm very suspicious about posts promoting the idea. It is very possible that these posts are innocent and just people repeating the idea that was pushed to them but it all just seems too convenient for the oil and gas industry.

Image credits: Wazula42

#13 The FBI Was Tracking Ernest Hemingway Because Of His Cuban Ties

74BMWBavaria:
The FBI tracking Ernest Hemingway. He became paranoid that they were tracking him. Turns out they were watching him.

Well he lived in Cuba and I believe was on good terms with Castro.

NotBobNRoss replied:
He also worked as a spy for the soviets in WWII, as well as the OSS (WWII CIA for those who don't know what the OSS is).

Image credits: 74BMWBavaria

#14 The Pentagon Was Spying On President Richard Nixon

President Nixon was so paranoid at the end of his administration that people dismissed out of hand his claim (on tape) that the Pentagon was spying on him. Turns out, they were doing exactly that.

Image credits: level 1 outsidepr

#15 The FBI Stalked, Harassed, And Blackmailed Martin Luther King Jr.

The FBI and local law enforcement stalked, harassed, and blackmailed MLK Jr.

They tried to get him to kill himself. They assassinated a leader of the black panthers in Chicago and then concocted bogus criminal charges against all the witnesses of the murder to lock them up and discredit them. They had undercover LEOs infiltrate basically every single social justice movement and had a whole playbook based around how to make those movements look more radical/violent/dangerous than they actually are to discredit them. Undercover officers and confidential informants at protests throw bricks or try to start violence. Local law enforcement, prosecutors, and the FBI all lied to judges, juries, grand juries, legislatures, and congress saying they never did things like this.

People had to break into an FBI field office and steal documents to prove they were actually doing this stuff and had to keep their identities secret for decades so they wouldn’t be prosecuted or persecuted for their actions. And the FBI and local law enforcement still do this stuff but everyone acts like they don’t.

COINTELPRO will change the way you look at media, government, and law enforcement

Image credits: Kiyae1

#16 Malcolm X's Assassination

Haven't seen anyone talk about Malcolm X's assassination. An NYPD former officer talked about how NYPD and FBI worked together to get his bodyguards removed so that an assassination could take place.

Image credits: RunningOnPunkTime

#17 The Government Is Watching You

Odd-Jupiter said:
That various governments recorded, analyzed, and stored every single piece of digital information, anyone shared with anyone else.

For you younger people, this used to be one of those tinfoil hat conspiracies.

Eligius_MS replied:
I can remember when it first started to become known there were people who would argue they didn't care because they had nothing to hide and weren't guilty. Most of the ones I still know are the most rabid about gov't going too far these days. Kinda like former smokers can be the worst anti-smoking people.

Image credits: Odd-Jupiter

#18 The Echelon Program, A Government Surveillance Program To Spy On People And Corporation Communication

The Echelon Program.

I'm amazed this one doesn't come up more, it was treated as a real tin-foil-hat looney conspiracy theory for years, I remember it being mentioned in a couple of films in the 90s (i think by crazy conspiracy theorist type characters).
Then Snowden blew his whistle and I was amazed how many details were right.

Image credits: L3PALADIN

#19 Operation Northwoods, A Proposed False Flag Operation Against American Citizens

Well, no one really knew about it until I believe the 90’s, so there would’ve been no theorizing, but in the early 60’s the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up a plan called “Operation Northwoods” in which they planned on staging and committing terror attacks across the U.S., only to turn around and blame it on Cuba in order to justify an invasion.
The proposal was thoroughly and completely rejected by JFK.

Image credits: rvhsmith

#20 The Renault Formula One Crash Controversy, Where One Driver Deliberately Crashed To Give A Team Mate An Advantage

Crashgate. In a nutshell...

Fernando Alonso is starting the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix from... quite a bad position, actually. The normal strategy when in a competitive car starting at the back is to load her up with fuel, and go as far as you can into the race before pitting. Weirdly, Alonso is instead one of the first to pit. The only possible way this can work is if the Safety Car comes out due to how the rules are enforced.

Well, exactly one lap later, Alonso's teammate has a big crash into the wall, and brings out the Safety Car, allowing Alonso to go on and win. At the time, many were accusing Alonso's Renault team of fixing the result due to how convenient it was for the Safety Car to come out at exactly the right time after the other car crashed. But hey, that's just a coincidence, right?
It wasn't a coincidence. It turned out Alonso's teammate was indeed told to crash by the team principal to benefit the team by scoring a win. This all came out in 2009, after the 2nd driver lost his seat for not being quick enough.

Image credits: Tetragon213

#21 False Flag Conspiracies That Disguise The Actual Source Of An Attack To Shift The Blame

False flags. There are conspiracy theorists that call 9/11 a false-flag attack, and while they’re definitely wrong about that (probably), false flag attacks themselves are not unprecedented. Operation Northwoods was proposed inside the US Department of Defense that didn’t come into fruition, but it called for CIA operatives to commit terrorist attacks against US citizens / Cuban immigrants / US military sites in order to justify going to war with Cuba. The US government is on record for considering the possibility of attacking its own soil to further their interests.

An attempted false flag attack that actually happened that I could think of was by the Israeli government in the Lavon Affair. The Israeli government had Egyptian Jews plant bombs in Egyptian/American/British-owned civilian target with the intent of blaming it on Egyptian communists, the Muslim Brotherhood, etc., with the hope that American/British governments would think the Egyptian Nasser government was unreliable for their financial support. Thankfully no one died as a direct result of the bombings and the spy ring was later uncovered, but what made this false flag event special enough for me to remember was that the surviving Israeli agents of this event were later honoured by the Israeli government, which I thought was really messed up given that the UK and the US are allies with the country.

Image credits: throwaway104728374

#22 Super Mario Bros. 3 Is Actually A Stage Set And Nothing There Is Real

In Super Mario Bros. 3, he wasn’t actually rescuing the princess again, was a stage play.

[Writer's Note: this conspiracy pertains to how the game opens up with a curtain rising on the title screen, the blocks are "bolted" as if it was a set, the end of every stage is an end of an act and the stage, and other aesthetic details, and Mario is actually Wario in disguise.]

Image credits: EngineerMinded