History WMG / BarneyAndFriends

The children get to have a lot of things, and some props just appear without Barney magic-ing them into existence. Whenever their parents need to show up, they appear out of thin air. Grandpa from the ''Great Adventure'' film is a crime lord who has Barney, Baby Bop, BJ, Riff, the kids' parents, Stella the Storyteller and her cousins, and even a NASA astronaut on his payroll to please the children at the school (plus he might also be a wizard or warlock who created the Barney doll for that reason). Barney and co. distract the kids with fun games (like in the "Barney's universe is shrinking" theory) whilst Grandpa and the other crime syndicate members use the school as a LegitimateBusinessmensSocialClub while organizing various criminal activities in the school's basement. In addition, Grandpa had some grunge kids on his payroll to start the anti-Barney humor thing just to distract people from learning the truth about Barney. Also, Grandpa and Grandma are the parents of the mom from the early ''Backyard Gang'' videos, and she too is a powerful crime figure.

Creator/DanielKaluuya is known for making horror films and has confirmed that the new movie would be DarkerAndEdgier compared to the rest of the series. The film will take a turn similar to Film/TheBananaSplits movie as a horror film and will reveal Barney as a self-centered child murderer, similar to how he is often portrayed as by Barney-haters.

It would explain how, as explained in ''Barney's Night Before Christmas'', Santa has known Barney practically ''all his life''.

Creator/DanielKaluuya is known for making horror films and has confirmed that the new movie would be DarkerAndEdgier compared to the rest of the series. The film will take a turn similar to Film/TheBananaSplits movie as a horror film and will reveal Barney as a self-centered child murderer, similar to how he is often portrayed as by Barney-haters.

Creator/DanielKaluuya is known for making horror films and has confirmed that the new movie would be DarkerAndEdgier compared to the rest of the series. The film will take a turn similar to Film/TheBananaSplits movie and reveal Barney as a self-centered child murderer, similar to how he is often portrayed as by Barney-haters.

* Maybe they'll introduce a kid with two moms or two dads, or a kid who's transgender. Speaking of "Everyone is Special", they'll have to update the song since there are more pronouns than just "his or her". Maybe they'll change it to "their own unique way" to keep in time with the beat.

It would explain why the kids are always changing. Barney, Baby Bop, and Bj represent those who run the human trafficking ring. I think it is a well-disquised front so that's why they can have visitors and no one notices.

[[WMG: Nope. The real reason why Barney tries to help kids in every way he can is that :]]

It would explain why the kids are always changing. Barney, Baby Bop, and Bj represent those who run the human trafficking ring. I think it is a well disquised front so that's why they can have visitors and no one notices.

The kids like to play at or near different schools. They frequently like to pick things they see in nature. Barney, Baby Bop, and BJ are all hallucinations that occur because of mushroom intoxication. Any real person they meet is actually real, they are just seen through the eyes of a child high on magic mushrooms.

More specifically the events of Barney and the Backyard gang are meant to show actual pedophile acts. Barney gets caught and thrown in jail at the end of this series. The actual Barney and friends show are just him "using his imagination" in jail. First with the same kids he molested. He later gets bored with them and starts imagining new kids. He kids paroled briefly in the movie "Barney's Great Adventure" However, sometime during the duration of this movie his old ways catch up to him and he is thrown back in jail for violating his parole.

...is so he can eat them later. Really, he's a ''Tyrannosaurus rex'', what would you expect.
* Barney states on the show multiple times that he only eats vegetables. Also, kids from previous seasons have guest starred on the later seasons.

Obligatory time lord theory, but with backup. Due to a Series/DoctorWho style chameleon circuit malfunction, her TARDIS split into 2 parts, with the travel functions being a door and the suitcase being the TARDIS interior proper. She knows the ending of Barney's story (And the book containing it being old and used despite its appearance relatively early) despite the fact it was still running: She just time traveled. She was also there for several of the stories she recounts. She uses the TARDIS interior primarily for prop storage and probably has a second entrance, indicating how she was able to go to different countries using the door without having the suitcase. Barney probably is in on this, somehow, because he knew that Stella was still in the same time period when they went around the world. Possibly the Barney Bag and/or the hammerspace closet behind trees and how the dinosaurs teleport has something to do with it? In fact, most of the recurring characters not shown explicitly to have a function outside events where Barney, Stella, Mr. Boyd, or someone similar is there probably are in on it. I guess the kids are fine with this, considering their parents have been shown to have known Barney was there and at some points seen him directly.

[[WMG: Nope. The real reason why Barney tries to help kids in every way he can is because:]]
All he wants to have a family of his own. Barney is basically the embodiment of imagination itself and therefore gets to see a lot of families in his 200 million year long career. But he also sees a lot of kids who are sad and one could argue that he sees kids who are suffering from neglectful families. Barney appears to children because he wants to let them know that someone loves and cares. This goal though very hard to achieve as there are so many suffering kids in the world. So BJ and Baby-Bop are created within the minds of children whenever Barney isn't available. But once they were created, the imaginations of children started to imagine all three of them together. Even though this means that the three will be constantly busy entertaining children from around the world, Barney is okay with this because he finally has a family of his own to love.

[[WMG:Barney is the [[WesternAnimation/RiseOfTheGuardians Guardian of Imagination]] who left the others to do his own thing.]]

[[WMG:Barney is a dinosaur... to those who imagine him to be.]]
Since Barney is a figment of children's imagination, he can literally turn into any shape or form. We just see him as a dinosaur because the show only revolves around the kids who imagine him that way.
* This is why on a few episodes Barney forgets that he's a dinosaur and admits that he's scared of them. He visits so many kids that it's hard to keep up what form he's in.

The children never leave the schoolyard, except with their "imaginations." That's because the schoolyard is all that is left of the universe. They don't go home or talk about their families, because they've been erased from existence,and by extension, the children's memories. With the universe contracting, it is not only space but TIME that is folding in on itself. This causes the age of the dinosaurs to be squashed into the age of humans, throwing Barney, Baby-Bop, and the other dinosaurs into the schoolyard with the kids. Barney distracts the kids with fun games, while other dinosaur scientists work furiously in the school's basement to save the universe.
* The kids' parents (and sometimes grandparents) appear in some of the episodes. Also, the original Backyard Gang series (and some of the direct-to-video Barney and Friends episodes) don't actually take place at the school, but in the kids' actual yards.


[[WMG: Barney is actually an evil demon.]]

* Alternatively, he is a demon but he has slowly become the mask. Eventually he will have to eat some to survive but he will greatly regret it.

My theory is that Stella the Storyteller was intended to be a part of the wrap-arounds for a ''Manga/{{Doraemon}}'' dub Lyrick was planning. Her door was intended to be an Anywhere Door, and the suitcase was originally intended to contain Doraemon's gadgets. When Lyrick couldn't make an agreement with Creator/TVAsahi in time, the plan was scrapped and Stella was imported into ''Barney & Friends'' with all the ''Doraemon'' references either eliminated or changed.

The children get to have a lot of things, and some props just appear without Barney magic-ing them into existence. Whenever their parents need to show up, they appear out of thin air. Grandpa from the ''Great Adventure'' film is a crime lord who has Barney, Baby Bop, BJ, Riff, the kids' parents, Stella the Storyteller and her cousins, and even a NASA astronaut on his pay roll to please the children at the school (plus he might also be a wizard or warlock who created the Barney doll for that reason). Barney and co. distract the kids with fun games (like in the "Barney's universe is shrinking" theory) whilst Grandpa and the other crime syndicate members use the school as a LegitimateBusinessmensSocialClub while organizing various criminal activities in the school's basement. In addition, Grandpa had some grunge kids on his payroll to start the anti-Barney humor thing just to distract people from learning the truth about Barney. Also, Grandpa and Grandma are the parents of the mom from the early ''Backyard Gang'' videos, and she too is a powerful crime figure.

It's not obvious, because he focuses so much on everyone else. But there are enough slip-ups in his behavior where he doesn't quite feel right, where his cheer seems forced, to imply that it's an act he's putting on for the benefit of everyone. In fact, the reason he hangs around and encourages kids so much is that it helps him avoid depressive thoughts.

* This theory makes sense. If you analyze the plot of all the 200+ episodes, you'll notice that Barney almost never has a problem of his own to solve. Most of the time, the younger dinos or human children have a problem. I recall an episode from the Park Era where Barney develops a pistachio addiction, and I think it's the only time that he had a problem. Barney has deep-seated emotional issues. He and the dino kids survived the extinction of the dinosaurs. The kids don't have SurvivorsGuilt, but Barney does, so he puts on a StepfordSmiler facade to hide his pain and make sure the kids are loved and don't suffer a deadly fate. The pistachio addiction was a coping mechanism to alleviate the depressive thoughts. [[WesternAnimation/StevenUniverseFuture Barney solves so many of the problems that others have, that he has almost no time for his own. This will culminate in Barney having a mental breakdown and turning into a kaiju, which is solved with a hug from all the kids he's helped over the years]]. Take notes, Daniel Kaluuya! You don't have to credit me or anything.

This is why the kids and adults almost never leave (depending on the season/video) their backyards, the school or the park without using their imaginations, and why the kids are imagining Barney, Baby Bop, B.J., and Riff ([[MyFriendsAndZoidberg and Stella the Storyteller, and Professor Tinkerputt]]) in the first place. Barney and his friends distract the kids with fun games to take their minds off the madness occurring in the ruins of society nearby.

The school (and later park) is actually a daycare for the children of Gizmonic employees / people sent up to the Satellite of Love. Barney is actually a reformed demon / well-intentioned reality warper who's idol form was subjected to a previous experiment, and is trapped in the Gizmonic daycare facility. Like with the "Joel broadcast the show to Earth to try and get help" theory for [=MST3K=], Joel, just prior to being shot into space, hacked the [=Cambot=] in the school/park with the ability to interfere with television broadcasts, and every time the kids arrived at the daycare Cambot automatically turned on and broadcast the goings-on of the experiment to the public in an attempt to get the kids and Barney rescued. The Mads, like with Joel on the Satellite of Love, discredited Barney's silent pleas for help by convincing the public that it was all the creation of a group of mothers from Texas, and they added musical numbers and a theme song to the show to reassure [=PBS=] viewers that the program was normal.

* Maybe they'll introduce a kid with two moms or two dads, or a kid who's transgender. Speaking of "Everyone is Special", they'll have to update the song since there's more pronouns than just "his or her". Maybe they'll change it to "their own unique way" to keep in time with the beat.

*** Or [[Music/TheWiggles Dorothy the Dinosaur]] could be Baby Bop and BJ’s mom.

* Isn't at least Baby Bob being his daughter confirmed? The ''Barney and the Backyard Gang'' episode "Barney in Concert" had Barney magically make-believing her into existence.

Make sense if you think about it since Barney is trying to encourage diversity, heck, there's a song called Everyone is Special.

The school (and later park) is actually a daycare for the children of Gizmonic employees / people sent up to the Satellite of Love. Barney is actually a reformed demon / well-intentioned reality warper who's idol form was subjected to a previous experiment, and is trapped in the Gizmonic daycare facility. Like with the "Joel broadcast the show to Earth to try and get help" theory for [=MST3K=], Joel, just prior to being shot into space, hacked the [=Cambot=] in the school/park with the ability to interfere with television broadcasts, and every time the kids arrived at the daycare Cambot automatically turned on and broadcast the goings-on of the experiment to the public in an attempt to get the kids and Barney rescued. The Mads, like with Joel on the Satellite of Love, discredited Barney's silent pleas for help by convincing the public that it was all the creation of a group of mothers from Texas, and they added musical numbers and a theme song to the show to reassure [=PBS=] viewers that the program was normal.

...is so he can eat them later. Really, he's a TyrannosaurusRex, what would you expect.

[[WMG: Stella the Storyteller was originally part of an aborted attempt by Lyrick Studios to license ''Anime/{{Doraemon}}'']]
My theory is that Stella the Storyteller was intended to be a part of the wrap-arounds for a ''Anime/{{Doraemon}}'' dub Lyrick was planning. Her door was intended to be an Anywhere Door, and the suitcase was originally intended to contain Doraemon's gadgets. When Lyrick couldn't make an agreement with Creator/TVAsahi in time, the plan was scrapped and Stella was imported into ''Barney & Friends'' with all the ''Doraemon'' references either eliminated or changed.

The school (and later park) is actually a daycare for the children of Gizmonic employees / people sent up to the Satellite of Love. Barney is actually a reformed demon / well-intentioned reality warper who's idol form was subjected to a previous experiment.

Would explain why he always invents crazy toys and magical contraptions.

[[WMG: Professor Tinkerputt works for [[Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000 Gizmonic Institute]]]]

This is why the kids and adults almost never leave (depending on the season/video) their backyards, the school or the park without using their imaginations, and why the kids are imagining Barney, Baby Bop, B.J., and Riff ([[MyFriendsAndZoidberg and Stella the Storyteller, and Professor Tinkerputt]]) in the first place. Barney and his friends distract the kids with fun games to take their minds off the madness occurring in the ruins of society nearby.

* Barney could have been lying when he said that. Also, considering the fact that the cast of kids changes each season, I wouldn't be surprised if he DID eat them. Although maybe some of them still just left of their own accord, which might explain why were able to make guest appearances in later seasons.

This is why the kids and adults almost never leave (depending on the season/video) their backyards, the school or the park without using their imaginations, and why the kids are imagining Barney, Baby Bop, B.J., and Riff ([[MyFriendsAndZoidberg and Stella the Storyteller, and Professor Tinkerputt]]) in the first place. Barney and his friends distract the kids with fun games to take their minds off the madness occurring the ruins of society nearby.